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A STUDY 



IN 



HUMAN NATURE 



/BY 

,YMAN ABBOTT, D.D. 


NEW YORK : 
CHAUTAUQUA PRESS. 

1884. 



tf 






Copyright 1884, by the 
CHAUTAUQUA LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC CIRCLE, 

New York. 



PREFACE. 



The object of this little book is purely practical. It is 
written to aid parents, teachers, and pastors, in their work 
of character-building ; incidentally, too, to aid each indi- 
vidual to build himself. It grew out of a practical need, 
and was written wholly with a practical end in view. 

Some years ago Dr. J. H. Vincent designed, as a part of 
his Chautauqua University, a Chautauqua School of The- 
ology. Its object .was not to supersede the thorough 
courses of biblical and theological study pursued in the 
seminaries, but to supplement them ; to aid pastors in 
pursuing their studies after they had already entered on 
their parish work, and to enable laymen and others, who 
were engaged in ministerial or quasi ministerial labor, to 
equip themselves more thoroughly for their work. He 
proposed to incorporate in the curriculum of this Chau- 
tauqua School of Theology a " Department of Human 
Nature," the object of which should be to aid the stu- 
dent in studying man, individually and socially ; human 
nature in history, in fiction, in the parish, and in society, 
thus enabling him to deal more wisely, because more 
truly scientifically, with the problems of individual and 
social life. Dr. Vincent asked me to take charge of 
this department, to create and to cultivate it. With 
much misgiving, I undertook the task ; moved thereto 
partly by a warm personal affection and esteem for 
Dr. Vincent, partly by a great respect for the work 
which he is doing, and partly by a special interest in 
this particular department. 

But no sooner had correspondence been opened with 
the students who desired to enter on this study, than 



PREFACE. 



we found ourselves confronted with an unexpected diffi- 
culty. There was no analysis of Human Nature which 
c ;uld be prescribed as a basis for our proposed course. The 
experiment of recommending several treatises, and leaving 
the students to make their own analysis, was not success- 
ful, and I was thus compelled to prepare an introduction to 
our study before we could prosecute it. Hence this treat- 
ise, the product of studies pursued as recreation for many 
years, but of composition completed in a few months. 

Having once undertaken to write at all, I have endeav- 
ored to prepare this Study in Human Nature, in a form 
so practical, so simple, and so broad, that it might be a 
help to every mother who desires to study the nature of 
her child, every teacher who wishes to study the nature 
of his pupil, every pastor who aims to study the character 
either of his parish, or of a single parishioner. All scholastic 
subtleties, all doubtful disputations between different 
schools, all technical terms, I have carefully avoided. My 
aim is not to expound a system of philosophy, but to in- 
cite the reader to a study of Human Nature, and to help 
him in pursuing it. 

Mental science has fallen under a popular ban. It is 
thought to be a hopeless plowing of a barren soil. But the 
sublimest work of God is man, and there can be no wor- 
thier object of devout study than him whom God has 
made after his own image ; and surely no object about 
which we are more concerned to know, whether we regard 
our own welfare or the well-being of our fellow-men. To 
all who love their fellow-men, and desire to know and 
serve them better, this little attempt to aid them in that 
knowledge and service is dedicated by 

THE AUTHOR. 

Cornwall-on Hudson, N. Y. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER. PAGE 

I. The Necessity op the Study 7 

II. A Preliminary Question 12 

III. True and False Materialism 16 

IV. The Temperaments 27 

V. Analysis of Human Nature 31 

VI. The Animal Impulses 36 

VII. The Social and Industrial Impulses 42 

VIII. The Spiritual Impulses 49 

IX. The Acquisitive Powers. — 1. The Senses and the Supersen- 

suous 58 

X. The Acquisitive Powers — 2. The Reflective Faculties 66 

XL Attention, Memory, Will 71 



^ 



A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE. 



CHAPTER I. 
THE NECESSITY OF THE STUDY. 

"Know thyself" was an ancient Greek apothegm. Lord 
Beaconsfield, in his famous address before the University of 
Edinburgh, declared that the fundamental conditions of suc- 
cess in life were two — knowing one's self, and knowing the 
needs of one's age or epoch. But of all knowledge, self- 
knowledge is the rarest ; perhaps, also, the most difficult to 
attain. It is only recently that physiology has become a 
study in our schools. Until within a few years all knowledge 
of the body was thought to be a specialty belonging only 
to the doctors. Even to-day mental science — the organism 
and operation of the mind — -is not studied in our schools. 
This is left to the higher classes in our colleges, and studied 
there as an abstract, not as a practical, science. Every man 
ought to know his own nature ; his bodily strength and weak- 
ness ; his mental strength and weakness ; his moral strength 
and weakness. A knowledge, concrete, not abstract, practical, 
not theoretical, of human nature, is essential to the best and 
truest success in life — to health, to development, to useful- 
ness. 

i. No man can keep either mind or body in health unless 
he knows what his mind and body are. He cannot keep 
himself in order unless he knows how he is constituted. The 
body is a wonderfully delicate machine. It is placed in a 
world where there are many influences at work destructive 
of it. There is poison in food, in water, in air; there is 



A STUD Y IN HUMAN NA TURE. 



" death in the pot." There is evil in excess; there is evil 
in scant measure. Men suffer from too much air and from too 
little ; from over-feeding and from under-feeding; from excess- 
ive sleep and from too little sleep ; from too violent exercise 
and from too little exercise. We must know not only what, 
but also how much, our bodies need. The specialists aver 
that most men have a streak of insanity in them. A thor- 
oughly sane mind is as rare as a thoroughly healthy body. 
To keep the mind well balanced, to preserve it in good order, 
to enable it to work clearly, quickly, efficiently, regularly, 
requires a knowledge of the mind and of the conditions of 
mental health. The ministers assure us that all men are 
diseased morally. Life abundantly bears out their assertion. 
No man is perfectly healthy, morally; for perfect health is 
a perfect balance of all the moral powers. Every faculty has 
its own disease. The conscience may become cruel — witness 
the Inquisition. Religion may become superstition — witness 
the history of all pagan and some forms of the Christian relig- 
ion. Love may become sentiment — witness the story of 
many a child ruined by the false love of a doting mother. 
And observe that every man's body, mind, and spirit is dis- 
tinct from every other man's. Its conditions of health are 
peculiar. What is one man's meat is another man's poison. 
One man needs cereals, another meat ; one man needs to 
read more fiction, another needs to abandon it altogether. 
One man needs to cultivate his reverence, another his con- 
science, a third his sympathy. To produce, to cultivate, to 
maintain health of body, mind, and spirit, every man has 
need to know his own nature, the laws of his own being, the 
condition of his own health. 

2. Self-knowledge is equally indispensable to growth, edu- 
cation, development. Some of the Hebrew scholars tell us 
that the familiar text in Proverbs about child-training'should 
read : Train up a child in his own way, that is, according to 
the bent of his natural genius, and when he is old he will not 



THE NECESSITY OF THE STUDY. 



depart from it. Whether this is sound exegesis or not, it 
is certainly sound philosophy. We must know the nature of 
what we would develop. We must understand what it is be- 
fore we begin to shape and fashion it for its future. Self- 
knowledge is the condition of self-culture. Are you deficient 
in imagination ? You must both know that fact, and what 
are the methods of developing imagination, or you cannot 
grow symmetrically. Has God endowed your boy with quali- 
ties which fit him for the merchant ? you only waste your 
time, and destroy his usefulness, by trying to make a minister 
of him. If Martin Luther's father could have had his way 
we should have had no Reformation, or a very different one ; 
for he wanted to make a lawyer of Martin. History is full 
of instances of men who knew their own nature better than 
their parents did, and so came to something in spite of 
parental blunders ; and still fuller of instances of men who 
neither knew themselves nor were understood by their 
parents, and so came to nothing. The best seed will pro- 
duce fruit only in the hands of one who knows what it is, and 
therefore what soil and cultivation it requires. Moral devel- 
opment requires moral self-knowledge. There is not one 
specific for all sins. Christ is not the world's medicine, but 
the world's physician ; and his prescriptions are various for 
various disorders. To grow in holiness is to grow in health- 
iness ; and this requires a knowledge of your own nature, 
that you may know what needs feeding and what needs 
pruning. Some men are weak through lack of self-esteem, 
and some men through too much. Some men pay too much 
attention to other people's opinion, and some men too little. 
Some men pay a blind reverence too easily, and some scarcely 
know what reverence means. Each nature requires its own 
education. The training which will help the man of undue 
self-esteem, will hurt the man who has too little. A chief 
end of life is to grow aright ; and no man can grow aright 

unless he understands the principles of his own nature. 
1* 



io A STUD Y IN HUMAN NA TURE. 

3. For the same reasons a knowledge of the principles of 
human nature is essential to the highest and best usefulness. 
A knowledge of human nature is the first condition of the 
successful conduct of life. Every business man, lawyer, 
doctor, statesman, needs it. If a man should attempt to 
farm without any knowledge of seeds and soils, or to mine 
without any knowledge of metals, he would be sure to fail ; 
how can he succeed in dealing with men if he knows nothing 
about human nature. The merchant needs this knowledge 
to select his salesmen; the salesman to sell his goods ; the 
doctor to secure and retain the confidence of his patients; 
the statesman to adapt his laws and policies to men as they 
are ; the editor to provide intellectual food that actual 
readers will read and profit by. All successful men have a 
knowledge of human nature. Sometimes they have acquired 
it empirically, not scientifically ; that is, they have picked it 
up by their dealings among men, not by a careful study of 
principles ; but in one way or the other they have got it. 

4. This knowledge is essential to the well-being of the 
family. Every girl ought to be taught the general principles 
of human nature, for it is probable that she will be a mother, 
and she needs this knowledge to know how to care for and 
to train her children. One of the great causes of domestic 
infelicities, quarrels, and divorces is ignorance of human nat- 
ure. The husband and wife do not know either themselves 
or each other; they do not know how to correct their own 
faults or the faults they see in each other. If they did, they 
would have hope of curing the present evil ; and hope would 
give patience; and patience would prevent bickerings, and 
strife, and separation. 

5. Especially is this knowledge of human nature necessary 
to all men whose professional duty it is to train or instruct 
others. The teacher needs it. It is more necessary to him 
than a knowledge of Greek, or Latin, or mathematics. He 
must know the minds which he is to mold and the laws by 



THE NECESSITY OF THE STUDY. 



which they are to be molded. There have been many 
scholars greater than Thomas Arnold, of Rugby, but never a 
greater teacher, because he knew so thoroughly well boy- 
nature and its laws. The minister needs it. It is more 
necessary to him than a knowledge of Hebrew or theology. 
He must know the natures he is to cure, and how to cure 
them. He must know the pathology of pride, vanity, covet- 
ousness, ambition, passion, if he would either mend the man- 
ners or change the lives of his congregation. 

The object of this little treatise is to afford some help to 
ministers, teachers, parents, and men and women generally, 
who wish to understand the general principles of human 
nature, and to aid them in a study of men, and women, and 
children, for the purpose of protecting them from temptation, 
developing them, and building them up into a Christian 
manhood and womanhood— perfect men in Christ Jesus. Its 
object is wholly practical ; its style will be as simple and 
plain as I can make it. 



12 A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE. 



CHAPTER II. 
A PRELIMINARY QUESTION. 

It has been greatly discussed among philosophers whether 
the mind is simple or complex ; whether it is one and indi- 
vidual, or made up of various distinct powers and faculties ; 
whether one and the same power imagines, reasons, remem- 
bers, feels, or whether there are distinct powers, of which one 
imagines, another reasons, a third remembers, a fourth feels. 
Let me first get this question clearly before the reader's mind. 

Man is equipped with various senses, each of which has 
its own peculiar function. It can perform that function, and 
no other. The ear can hear, but it cannot see; the eye can 
see, but it cannot taste ; the palate can taste, but it cannot 
smell. The body is composite. It is made up of different 
organs or faculties. The whole man is an orchestra ; each 
organ is a single instrument. If that is broken, or gets out 
of tune, no other can take its place. Now some persons 
suppose that the mind is similarly a composite ; that it is 
made up of a variety of faculties and powers ; that there is 
one power or faculty which reasons, another which compares, 
a third which remembers or recalls, a fourth which imagines, 
etc. Those who hold this opinion, however, are not agreed 
as to how many mental faculties or powers there are. Some 
suppose there are very few, others that there are very many. 
A very common classification or division of the mind is into 
three powers or classes of powers : the reason, the sensibili- 
ties or feelings, and the will. Others divide these generic 
classes again into a great variety of reasoning and feeling 
powers, each confined to its own exercise or function, as the 
ear to hearing and the eye to seeing. 



A PRELIMINARY QUESTION-. 13 

Other thinkers suppose that there is no such division ; that 
the mind is not made up of a variety of organs at all, that it 
is simple and indivisible. The mouth is so formed that it 
can perform two very different functions — it can eat and it 
can speak. There are not two organs, one an eating and 
the other a speaking organ, but one organ which now eats, 
now speaks. So some scholars suppose that there is one 
mind or soul which is absolutely indivisible, but which exerts 
itself in different ways at different times : it sometimes re- 
members, sometimes imagines, sometimes loves, sometimes 
hates, sometimes reasons, sometimes chooses ; but it is always 
the same power which remembers, imagines, hates, loves, 
reasons, and chooses. 

Now, this is a question on which no absolute conclusion 
can be reached. We cannot analyze the mind as we can 
analyze a substance in a laboratory, and see what are its con- 
stituent parts, and determine whether it has any parts, or is 
a simple substance. We have only two methods of judging 
about the mind, and neither of these methods gives us any con- 
clusive answer to the question whether the mind is simple or 
complex. We can observe the operation of other men's 
minds by studying its results in action, or in speech which is 
a kind of action ; and we can study the action of our own 
minds by looking within and seeing what our own thoughts 
and feelings are. But, in both these cases, we study only the 
operations, not the mind itself; and neither a study of the 
results of mental operations in the actions of men and 
women about us, nor a study of our own mental operations 
by looking within and trying to ascertain of our self-con- 
sciousness how we think and feel, throw any important light 
on the question whether the mind itself is simple or complex. 
All that we know about the mind is its operation ; all else is 
theory. 

There are some metaphysical and abstract arguments for the 
opinion that the mind, the I within, that controls the body, what 



14 A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE. 

the Germans call the ego — which is Latin for I — is simple, 
not complex ; that is, one power operating in different ways 
and doing different things. I am myself inclined to think 
that the better opinion ; but it is not necessary here to go 
into this question at all, for what we are going to study is not 
the mind itself, but human nature, that is, the operatio?is of 
the mind. And there is no doubt that the operations of the 
mind are complex. There may be, I am inclined to think 
there is, but one power, which perceives and thinks and feels 
and wills; but perceiving and thinking and feeling and will- 
ing are very different actions, and it is only with the actions 
that we have to do. 

In this book, then, I speak habitually of the different 
faculties or powers of the mind. The reader must under- 
stand that I do not mean by this phraseology to imply that 
the mind itself is divided into different powers, each with its 
own peculiar function. But in order to study mental 
phenomena we must form some classification of them, and 
must analyze them under different divisions and sub- 
divisions. When, for example, we speak of the faculty of 
comparison, we do not mean that the mind has one power 
which compares and observes the relation of things, and 
can do this and nothing else ; but we mean that the mind 
has a power of observing the relations of things, and this 
power we call the faculty of comparison. In the same way 
we might say that the mouth has a faculty of eating and a 
faculty of speaking and a faculty of singing, without mean- 
ing that there are in the mouth three sets of organs, of 
which one eats, another speaks, and a third sings. 

I do not wish to leave the impression that the question 
whether the mind is simple or complex is one of no special 
consequence ; only that it is not necessary for us to deter- 
mine it in order to our present plan of study. It has an 
important, though perhaps rather indirect, moral bearing. 
That bearing may be briefly mentioned here. If a man has 



A PRELIMINARY QUESTION. 15 

a good ear, but poor eye-sight, we cannot say that his facul- 
ties are either good or bad ; one faculty is good, the other is 
bad. Now, if man is made up of a bundle of faculties, some 
of which are good and the others bad ; if, for example, his 
conscience is strong, but his love and sympathy are weak, we 
cannot say of him that he is either good or bad ; part of him 
is good and part of him is bad. If, on the other hand, he is 
a unit, and conscience is simply the man acting in one direc- 
tion and love is the man acting in another, then we cannot 
truly say of him that he is good until all his actions are con- 
formed to the divine standard. If, for example, a carpenter 
has a box of tools containing a chisel of soft iron and very 
dull, and a plane of finely tempered steel, very sharp, and we 
ask him what sort of a set of tools he has, he would reply, 
some of the tools are good and some are poor. But if an 
apprentice has learned to drive a nail without splitting the 
wood, but he cannot yet saw a straight line, there is no sense 
in which we can say he is a good carpenter. He is not a 
good carpenter until he has learned to do all carpentering 
operations at least reasonably well. This illustration will 
give a hint of the argument for the simplicity of the mind, 
of which I spoke above. When I yield to my anger and 
speak a bitter word, I am conscious that I have done wrong: 
not that some thing in me has done wrong, but that the whole 
I has sinned; and this, perhaps, is what James means when 
he says that he who has kept the whole law and yet offends 
in one point is guilty of all. It is the soul that sins, not a 
faculty in the soul. Thus there is a reason in our conscious- 
ness of sin for believing that the soul or mind — the ego, the 
I — is a unit, not complex or composite. In this book, however, 
in speaking of mental and moral action, I shall, for convenience' 
sake, speak of mental faculties, meaning thereby not separate 
powers, but separate activities of the same power. working in 
different ways. 



16 A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE. 



CHAPTER III. 
TRUE AND FALSE MATERIALISM. 

It is common, even in the pulpit, to hear the phrase, "Man 
has a soul ; " and it is scarcely possible to avoid embodying 
this same thought sometimes in the phrase "man's soul," which 
is only an abbreviation. This phrase, however, expresses a 
falsehood. It is not true that man has a soul. Man is a 
soul. It would be more accurate to say that man has a 
body. We may say that the body has a soul, or that the soul 
has a body; as we may say that the ship has a captain, or 
the captain has a ship; but we ought never to forget that the 
true man is the mental and spiritual ; the body is only the 
instrument which the mental and the spiritual uses. 

Still more accurately, however, man, as we see him and 
have to do with him in this life, is composed, in Paul's lan- 
guage, of body, soul, and spirit. The distinction between 
these three we must consider hereafter. Here it must be 
enough to say : i. That the body is purely physical, as much 
so as a tree ; that it is composed of certain well-known 
physical elements, and subject to physical laws. 2. That the 
mind or soul (in Latin the anima, in Greek the pseuche) is 
that which sees, feels, thinks, and that it is analogous to that 
which controls the body in the animals, though in man pos- 
sessing powers vastly superior to those observed in any mere 
animal. 3. That the spirit (in Latin spiritus y in Greek 
pneamd) is that which deals with the invisible, believes, rev- 
erences, distinguishes between right and wrong, arid that 
there is nothing analogous to it in the animal creation. The 
body links us to the earth, the mind to the animal creation, 
the spirit to God. 



TRUE AND FALSE MATERIALISM. 17 

To understand human nature we must understand the 
relation which the mind and spirit, that is, the invisible 
part of man, has to the body, that is, to the physical or ma- 
terial part. 

1. It is now well established as a scientific fact that every 
mental and moral act employs some physical agency and 
makes a draft upon the physical organization. In fact, every 
mental action is also partly a material and physical action. 
We know, for instance, that we see by means of a physical 
organ, the eye ; we hear by means of a physical organ, the 
ear. The eye does not, however, see ; for if the nerve which 
connects the eye with the brain be cut, though the picture is 
perfectly painted on the retina of the eye, the person sees 
nothing. So the ear does not hear; for if the nerve which 
connects the drum of the ear with the brain be cut, the per- 
son hears nothing. The seeing and the hearing take place 
within us, and the eye and the ear are only the physical in- 
struments by which they are facilitated. The eye no more 
sees than the telescope ; the ear no more hears than the ear 
trumpet. But both are necessary instruments to seeing and 
hearing. For aught we know, however, both eye and ear 
may be destroyed as they are at death, and the power of 
seeing and hearing possessed by the soul may be improved, 
not impaired, by the loss of the instruments. 

Now as the eye is the instrument of seeing, and the ear of 
hearing, so the brain is the instrument of thinking and feel- 
ing and imagining. Every mental and moral action em- 
ploys some portion of the brain, as every act of seeing 
employs the eye, and every act of hearing employs the ear. 
Not only that, but every such action destroys a part of the 
brain, and a new brain tissue must be formed to take its 
place. Every action of the man, physical, mental, or moral, 
wastes some tissue. The principal physical function of life 
appears to be carrying off this wasted and exhausted and 
now useless tissue by various methods of drainage, and sup- 



18 A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE. 

plying new tissue to take its place by various methods of 
food supply. 

In all ages of the world the use of physical organs by the 
mind and spirit has been recognized, not only by the philos- 
ophers, but also by the common people. The ancient He- 
brews put the seat of the emotions in the bowels ; hence the 
phrase, " bowels of mercies/' as used in Scripture. This was 
probably because strong emotion affects the bowels. Later, 
for an analogous reason, because of the effect of strong feel- 
ing on the heart and circulating system, common language 
fixed upon the heart as the seat of the emotions. This notion 
still lingers in such phrases as " a warm-hearted friend," "a 
good-hearted fellow." But it is now well established that the 
real seat of both the affections and the intellect is in the 
brain. By this is not meant that they are located in the 
brain. They have no location; they are omnipresent in 
the body, as God is omnipresent in the universe, equally con- 
trolling all its parts. It is more accurate, therefore, to say 
that it is now well established that the material or physical 
organ of all thought and feeling is in the brain; that every 
mental and emotional activity employs some part of the 
brain ; that every such activity uses up some brain tissue, 
requiring, therefore, a new supply ; and that, therefore, the 
healthful action of the mind requires a good brain, and 
the best action of the mind requires good digestion and 
good circulation, since on these depend the renewal and re- 
plenishing of the brain. 

There are various grounds for this now well-established 
conviction. They are all summed up in the general statement 
that any disease of the brain produces mental and moral 
disease, while, on the other hand, no disease which does not 
directly or indirectly affect the brain, has any power to affect 
the mental and moral sanity of the patient. Thus a blow 
on the knee which will produce excruciating pain will leave 
the mind clear, while a blow on the brain will produce un- 



TRUE AND FALSE MATERIALISM. ig 

consciousness. A gastric fever does not materially alter the 
apparent moral condition of the sick man, at least not more 
than might be expected from the effect on the brain of so seri- 
ous a disease in the organ on which it depends for its supply. 
But a brain fever makes the patient delirious, and sometimes 
changes entirely his apparent intelligent and moral character. 
Thus I have known of the case of a young man, of most ex- 
emplary character, who was almost morbidly sensitive to any 
word or phrase of an indelicate or coarse description, who, 
being taken with brain fever, was so blasphemous and ob- 
scene that it was impossible for any female attendant to 
remain in the room with him. It was clear that the disease 
was physical, not moral ; it was a disease, not in the mind or 
spirit, but in the organ which they employed. The difference 
may be compared to that which would occur if a Rubin- 
stein should sit down to play upon an old and out-of-tune 
piano. The discords would be due to the instrument, not to 
the player. — 

If the brain is impaired the mind is invariably affected ; if, 
on the other hand, the brain is uninjured, the mental and 
moral powers will remain unaffected, though the rest of the 
body may be to all intents and purposes well-nigh dead. It 
is true that the brain is so closely connected with the nervous 
system, which pervades the whole body, that any thing which 
impairs the nerves of the body impairs the brain, and there- 
fore affects the mind ; but the general principle, that every 
other part of the body may be weakened and the mind be 
left comparatively unimpaired, provided the brain is uninjured, 
has had many striking illustrations in the history of great 
mental work achieved by chronic invalids. A very striking 
illustration of this is afforded by the extraordinary story of 
John Carter. At the age of twenty-one he fell from the 
branch of a tree, forty feet in height, and was taken up un- 
conscious. Examination showed a severe injury to the spinal 
column, effectually disconnecting the brain from the rest of 



20 A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE. 

the nervous system, and depriving the body of all power of 
motion from the neck downward. He soon recovered con- 
sciousness, but never moved a limb again. But his brain, 
and with it the powers of his mind and spirit, were unim- 
paired. From being ungodly and ignorant, he became both 
devout and intelligent, a great reader, and soon learned to 
write, to draw, and even to paint, holding the pencil or the 
camel's hair brush between his teeth, enlarging or reducing 
the copies before him with great artistic skill and perfect 
success. He lived in this condition for fourteen years, his 
whole body from the neck downward being paralyzed and 
helpless, while his mind and spirit were not only uninjured, 
but grew brighter and clearer to the end. It was evident 
that the accident which had left only the head uninjured had 
left all the organs of thought and feeling uninjured.* 

It is now, then, well established as an undoubted scientific 
fact that the mind or soul acts through organs; that these 
organs are in and form a part of the brain ; that their healthy 
action depends upon the healthy condition of the organ, that 
is, of the brain ; that any thing which impairs the health of the 
brain impairs the healthful action of the mind or soul, though 
how it affects the mind or soul itself we cannot say ; that what 
we call mental diseases are often diseases of the organ ; that 
the remedy for what appears to be an imperfect or evil ac- 
tion of the mind or soul must sometimes be applied to the 
organ, that is, it must be physical rather than mental or 
moral ; and that whoever has to do with the training, educa- 
tion, or development of men, has a need to study the relations 
of the mind to its organs, and to ascertain, as far as possible, 
what diseases and what hinderances to development are 
mental and moral, and what are material or physical ; and, 
finally, that he who would attain the highest degree of man- 
hood must study, not only to improve his soul and spirit by 



* See an interesting monograph, " The Life of John Carter," by F. J. Mills. Hurd & 
Houghton, 1868. 



TRUE AND FALSE MA TERIALISM. 21 

intellectual and spiritual processes, but also to care for and 
nourish properly his brain, that is, the organ of his mind, 
soul, and spirit. A healthy man is sana mens in sana corpore, 
a healthy mind in a healthy body. Well-being requires 
healthy organs as well as a healthy mind to use them. The 
physician needs often to inquire into the condition of the 
mind in order to prescribe intelligently for the body. The 
minister needs often to inquire into the condition of the 
body in order to prescribe intelligently for the mind and the 
spirit. A sleepy congregation is oftener the sexton's fault 
than the preacher's. Depression of spirits may be due to 
remorse ; it may be due to a poor digestion or a diseased 
liver. Remedy for apparent sin may be Bible and prayer ; 
it may be less food and a run in the open air. The teacher, 
the parent, the preacher, needs to study with care the condi- 
tion of the body in order to deal wisely and well with the 
intellectual and the moral condition of those intrusted to 
their charge. Moral reformation and material reformation 
must go together. It is almost hopeless to promote temper- 
ance and godliness in our great cities so long as the popula- 
tion live in some wards with more persons to the square foot 
than are allowed in the average cemetery. The best preven- 
tion of crime is often a change of air, food, and other physical 
conditions. The great majority of street boys, if left in New 
York city, grow up to swell the number of the criminal 
classes. But last year the " Christian Union " sent out to 
Minnesota, through the Children's Aid Society, some one 
hundred and twenty-five children. Of these, all but five are 
doing well ; that is, they are making good, industrious citi- 
zens. Much is due to a change in moral and intellectual 
circumstances, but something is also due to a change in 
physical circumstances. 

Modern science has gone further in its investigation. It 
is beginning to learn that different parts of the brain perform 
different functions. It is now well settled that the organs of 



22 A STUD V IN HUMAN NA TURE. 

sense, of intellect, of feeling or emotion, and of will, are not 
the same. But these investigations are not yet completed, 
and it is not necessary for our purpose in this little treatise 
to. enter upon this branch of the subject. 

It is necessary, however, before closing this chapter, to note 
the difference between the doctrine that the mind acts 
through organs, and is therefore dependent for its practical 
results upon the health of the organ, and the doctrine that 
there is no mind, but that which we call mental and moral 
action — thought, feeling, and will — are the effects of material 
changes taking place within the body. This doctrine goes 
by the name of materialism. Among the ancients there was 
a class of philosophers who taught that God did not create 
the world, but the world created God ; that is, they held 
that matter is eternal, and that spirit was evolved out of mat- 
ter. Analogous to this is the doctrine of modern material- 
ism ; the doctrine that the body is not the instrument which 
the mind or soul uses, but the machine whose action pro- 
duces the mind or soul, somewhat as the friction between the 
grindstone and the scythe produces sparks. It is unquestion- 
ably true that every mental and moral action is accompanied 
with a change in the brain. The materialist, observing this, 
has jumped to the conclusion that the change in the brain 
produces the mental and moral activity. This is a long 
jump. 

i. In the first place there is no evidence whatever to war- 
rant this conclusion. It is as if a boy seeing an organist 
playing on an organ should conclude that the keys of the 
organ moved the fingers of the player. We do know that 
the mental and the brain actions are contemporaneous and 
concomitant ; but this gives us no reason to suppose that the 
brain action produces the mental action, or that the mental 
action produces the brain action. Which is the cause and 
which the effect we must learn in another way. 

2. If the organist were an automaton, the boy would be left 



TRUE AND FALSE MATERIALISM. 



in doubt whether the machinery which moved the organ was 
in the organ or in the man. Unless he could take one or 
the other to pieces, he could not tell which was the agent 
and which the instrument ; which acted, and which was acted 
upon. Now we cannot look within our neighbor to see 
whether the brain moves the mind or the mind the brain ; 
but we can look inside ourselves and see which moves first. 
We do this by self-consciousness. And this assures us that 
the mind operates first, and the brain and nervous system 
afterward. The artist is conscious that he forms in his mind 
a picture before his hand begins to put it upon canvas. We 
know that we will to reach out our hand or stretch forth our 
foot before we move the organ. Walking does not make us 
desire to go ; the desire to go makes us walk. So far as we can 
trace mental and moral action at all within ourselves, it is 
clear that first comes the desire, then the will, then the action. 
It is very evident that the visible organs, that is, the eye and 
hand and ear, are the servants, not the masters ; there is no 
reason whatever to suppose that the invisible organs, that is, 
the brain organs, are the masters, not the servants. 

3. If the organ produces the activity, if the brain secrets 
thought and feeling as the liver secrets bile, as has been 
claimed by the materialist, there is no such thing as right 
and wrong. Man is a mere physical machine. His thought 
and feeling and will have no more moral character than the 
sparks of an electrical machine. Garfield was simply a good 
and useful machine ; Guiteau was simply a bad and danger- 
ous machine. It is true that even on this theory we might 
still continue to put the good machine where it would do the 
most good, and destroy the bad one ; we might elect a Gar- 
field to the presidency much as we w r ould put a good time- 
keeper on the mantle-piece, and destroy a Guiteau, much as 
we would knock to pieces an infernal machine. But we 
could no longer approve the one and condemn the other; and 
in fact materialists do either actually deny that there is any 



24 AS TUB Y IN HUMAN NA TURE. 

such thing as virtue and vice, or make very little of the dis- 
tinction between the two. But no philosophy of man can be 
true which denies the most fundamental fact in human ex- 
perience, the fact of oughtness, a distinction between right 
and wrong, the sense inherent in all men that some things 
are right, honorable, praiseworthy, and that other things are 
wrong, dishonorable, worthy of condemnation and punish- 
ment. The family, society, citizenship, are all built on the 
recognition of this fundamental fact which materialists either 
deny or ignore. 

4. If the organ produces the action there is no reason to 
suppose that the action will survive the organ ; if the brain 
feels, thinks, reasons, wills, when the brain crumbles into 
dust the thinking, reasoning, feeling, willing, will cease. 
When the fuel is burned out the fire will cease ; when the 
battery is exhausted the electrical current will cease. Ac- 
cording to materialism the brain is a fire, and all mental and 
moral phenomena are only the heat it gives out ; the brain is 
a galvanic battery, and all thought and feeling are only the 
electric current which it produces. Now we have nothing to 
do here with the morality of this doctrine ; we are not con- 
sidering its moral effect, but its reasonableness. A doctrine 
which has nothing whatever to support it, and has against it 
the almost universal instincts of mankind, is not reasonable. 
And the instinct of immortality is the almost universal in- 
stinct of mankind. We feel our immortality before we pass 
from the body, much as the bird feels conscious of the power 
of flight before it is fledged, or has attempted to leave the 
nest. We are conscious of something within which is imper- 
ishable. But if the organ produces the action, there is no 
such imperishable power within ; the pains of remorse do not 
differ from the pains of dyspepsia, nor the joys of love from 
those of appetite. No one can really believe this ; no one 
acts as though he did, not even those philosophers who im- 
agine that they believe it. 



TRUE AND FALSE MATERIALISM. 25 

5. Finally, if the organ produces the action, then there is 
no personality. There is no I that thinks, reasons, feels, 
acts; there is only a succession of nerve phenomena which 
we call thinking, reasoning, feeling, acting. If the brain is 
a kind of galvanic battery, and feeling and thinking are the 
sparks, then I am only the succession of sparks. This has 
been seen and acknowledged by the materialists themselves. 
Thus Hume, declaring that there is no such principle as self 
in one, goes on to affirm of mankind that "they are nothing 
but a bundle or collection of different perceptions which 
succeed one another with inconceivable rapidity, and are in 
a perpetual flux and movement." This is the logical conclu- 
sion of materialism, or the doctrine that the organ moves the 
organist, not the organist the organ ; and it arouses against 
itself the instant testimony of our own consciousness. If 
there is any thing that we k?iow y absolutely and positively, it 
^s that we exist ; that there is an I which perceives, feels, 
reasons, wills, and that is as separate and distinct from the 
snere succession of perceiving, feeling, reasoning, and willing) 
as the player is from the succession of notes which he pro- 
duces on the organ. That there is both an I and a not I is 
perfectly clear to every one of us. The doctrine that there 
is no I, no self, no personal identity, can never make any 
greater progress among mankind as a practical doctrine than 
the doctrine of Berkley, that there is no external world, and 
that instead of real objects which we think we see, hear, 
touch, taste, and smell, there is only a succession of impres- 
sions, a seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling; that we 
are all living in a dream, some in a delightful one, others in 
a nightmare ; that life is only a kind of phantasmagoria. The 
one philosopher denies that there is any thing not I ; I is all 
there is. The other denies that there is any I ; what seems 
to be so is only a succession of physical forces. It is doubt- 
ful whether any man really believes either of these notions. 
And it has been necessary to point out the absurdities in- 
2 



26 A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE. 

volved in the doctrine of materialism only in order to make 
perfectly clear to the reader the distinction between true and 
false materialism. The true materialism teaches that the mind 
and spirit act always in this life through organs, and that 
healthy mental and moral action depends upon healthy 
organs. This is established by a variety of physical experi- 
ments, and is now undisputed. The false materialism teaches 
that the material organism produces all mental and moral 
phenomena; and it is without any evidence whatever to sup- 
port it, is a purely abstract notion, and is contradicted by our 
consciousness of our own actions, by our inward sense of the 
distinction between right and wrong, by our instinct of im- 
mortality, and by our certainty of personal existence and 
identity. 



THE TEMPERAMENTS. 27 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE TEMPERAMENTS. 

From a very early age physiologists have recognized a 
characteristic difference between persons possessing the same 
organs, and yet manifestly possessing different qualities. 
These characteristic differences have been called tempera- 
ments. How far they are physical, how far mental, is a ques- 
tion not necessary here to discuss ; certainly it has not been 
determined. But that they are partly physical is unquestion- 
able. Various classifications have been suggested of these 
temperaments, no one of which is altogether satisfactory ; but 
there is, perhaps, none better than the one which is at once 
the simplest, the most common, and very ancient, into the 
nervous, the sanguine, the bilious, and the lymphatic. In 
the person of nervous temperament the nervous organism is 
the predominant one ; usually the head is large and finely 
formed, the skin fair, the complexion light, the hair fine and 
generally dark. Any one of these signs, however, may be 
wanting, and the person still possess a highly organized and 
delicate nervous system. A more certain indication of it is 
sensitiveness to impressions, both physical and mental, subtle 
and readily responsive sympathy, and quickness and alert- 
ness of action both in mind and body. The person of ner- 
vous organization is also often able to sustain an amount of 
labor or suffering far beyond what would be anticipated of 
him from his general physical condition, but always at the 
hazard of a sudden and sometimes an irretrievable collapse, 
following the expenditure of nervous force, not adequately 
kept up by other organs. Such a person is also liable to 
great fluctuation of feeling — both exaltation and depression, 



28 A STUD Y IN HUMAN NA TURE. 

dependent on the condition of the nervous system, and some- 
times upon slight/ external circumstances acting upon it, as 
the weather, food, or drink, or even social sympathy, or the 
lack of it. In the person of sanguine temperament the blood 
currents are rich and strong ; the whole nature is therefore 
well fed ; the nervous system, whatever its capacity, is habit- 
ually at its best. Such a person has usually a rich color, often 
red or reddish hair, generally a light eye, and a bounding 
motion. A surer indication is vigor in action and hopefulness 
in feeling. To act is a pleasure to the sanguine ; idleness is 
a vice which he cannot understand ; weariness a weakness 
with which he has not easily any sympathy. And as it is a 
delight to cope with difficulties, they have no terror for 
him, and he carries into every exigency a hopeful spirit. He 
scarcely knows the meaning of despair. The reader will 
find a fuller description of this temperament in Campbell's 
immortal verse, which may serve a better purpose than 
a more scientific description would do. The bilious tem- 
perament is the reverse of the sanguine, and is, indeed, 
rather the product of a disease than of the predominant ac- 
tivity of a healthy organ. Physiologists are not agreed among 
themselves as to the function of the liver or the effect or 
object of bile, but unquestionably one of the chief functions 
of the liver is to eliminate from the system the waste, that is, 
the dead tissues after they have served their purpose, and 
bile is at least in part an excretion of materials which are 
decomposing and ready to be removed from the system. 
When the liver fails to do its work properly, and these mate- 
rials are not removed, but remain in the blood to circulate 
again through the system, which they cannot feed any more 
than the ashes of a burnt coal can feed the fire, the man is 
said to be bilious ; when they exist in the system to a large 
degree he is poisoned, and if the poison cannot be removed 
he is certain to die. When as a habit of the body, very apt 
to be produced by sedentary habits, or excessive or unwise 



THE TEMPERAMENTS. 29 

food, the liver thus fails toleliminate from the circulation 
matter which should be removed, the power of activity of 
every kind becomes impaired, exertion is difficult, thought is 
slow, the head is dull and stupid, small difficulties grow seri- 
ous to the imagination, and the whole mood becomes both 
inert and melancholy. A person of this temperament is or- 
dinarily of a sallow complexion, of dark hair, sluggish in 
action, and depressed in spirits. The lymphatics also share 
in the work of removing the effete tissues from the system. 
When they fail to fulfill this function, the waste material re- 
mains in the system, not, however, in the blood, but in the 
tissues. These add nothing to the real vigor of the man, 
because they are an addition of valueless and really dead 
tissue. Such a man is loaded down like a locomotive which 
should be compelled to carry in the tender its own ashes. 
He is likely to be obese, though not necessarily offensively 
so; he is certain to be sluggish and good-natured; not quick 
to take offense, because not quick to action of any kind; 
habitually content ; rarely or never giving himself to work 
spontaneously, but only under the pressure of some motive, 
and always glad to relax his work and drop into idleness 
again. In fiction, the fat boy in Dickens's " Pickwick Papers" 
is a travesty on the lymphatic temperament. Mr. Bain has 
suggested that to this ancient classification of temperaments 
should be added the muscular temperament, in which the 
muscular system predominates, in which physical action is 
enjoyed for its own sake, which creates a love for field sports 
and athletics of all kinds, and of which probably the Roman 
and Grecian gladiator might be regarded as extreme types. 

I have necessarily spoken of each of these temperaments 
as distinct from every other ; in fact, all temperament's are a 
combination. In every man something is contributed by the 
nerves, the blood, the liver, the lymphatics, and the muscles ; 
no two men were ever composed in the same way ; the vari- 
ations are endless. Frequent combinations are the nervous- 



30 A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE. 

sanguine, the nervous-bilious, the nervous-muscular, the 
lymphatic-sanguine, the lymphatic-bilious, and the muscular- 
sanguine. As active exercise is the best method of keeping 
the body free from its own degenerate and wasted tissues, 
and assuring their elimination from the system, the muscular 
is rarely found in combination with either the lymphatic or 
the bilious, and for the same reason the bilious is rarely 
found in combination with the sanguine, since the life cur- 
rents can never be vigorous and healthy when the body is 
choked with its own waste. It is, however, certain that in 
any estimate of human nature, and in any study of the indi- 
vidual, the student must bear in mind the effect which the 
predominance of these temperaments or their combination — 
the nervous, the sanguine, the bilious, the lymphatic, and the 
muscular — may have upon mental and moral activity. 



ANAL YSIS OF HUMAN NA TURE. 31 



CHAPTER V. 

ANALYSIS OF HUMAN NATURE. 

We are now prepared to enter upon an analysis of human 
nature. In doing so, however, I must first again remind my 
readers of the object of this treatise, and of the fundamental 
principles already laid down. 

1. The object of this treatise is riot to afford an anatomical 
chart of the human mind. It is not to explain what are the 
powers or faculties of which the human soul is composed. 
Whether the mind is simple or compound is not the question 
here ; for myself, I regard it as simple ; not as, in strictness 
of speech, composed of different faculties at all, but only as 
acting in different modes, and to a greater or less extent 
through different organs. The analysis here suggested is 
not even a description of the constituent parts of the mind. 
It is not asserted, nor even assumed, that the mind has differ- 
ent parts. It is simply an analysis for the convenience of 
classifying the various mental phenomena. The same mind 
hears and sees ; but hearing and seeing are not the same. 
So the same mind reasons, imagines, remembers ; but reason- 
ing, imagining, and remembering are not the same. Though 
for convenience I use the term faculty in this classification, 
the classification is simply suggested for the better and more 
orderly arrangement, and more satisfactory study of mental 
activities as actually seen in real life and living characters. 

2. It is not, therefore, necessary for us to consider whether 
the powers or faculties here mentioned are original and sim- 
ple powers of the mind or not. They are not suggested as 
original and simple powers of the mind. In some instances 
they clearly are not. Mr. Bain has shown, I think, very 



32 A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE. 

clearly, that combativeness and destructiveness may be traced 
to a love of power; that they are mainly, if not wholly, man- 
ifestations of a love of power. " The feeling of power essen- 
tially implies comparison, and no comparison is so effective 
and so startling as that between victor and vanquished. The 
chuckle and glee of satisfaction at discomfiting an opponent, 
no matter by what weapons, are understood wherever the 
human race has spread, and are not wanting to the superior 
animals." This is true. Nevertheless, the manifestations of 
the love of power are so various, that for purposes of classi- 
fication it is convenient to put by themselves those which are 
exhibited in combat and destruction. Something of the 
same fundamental motives may underlie the constructive 
work of Stevenson and the destructive work of Von Moltke, 
but in the study of human nature these different man- 
ifestations need to be classified under different titles. So 
again, it may be true, that acquisitiveness is not an original 
instinct, but is simply the rational endeavor of man to obtain 
the advantages supposed to be conferred by wealth, and to 
avoid the evils produced by poverty ; though this theory 
hardly accounts for the blindness of covetousness and the 
self-imposed wretchedness of the miser. But whether it is 
true or not, it aids in the study of life to recognize acquisi- 
tiveness as though it was an original and simple instinct, and 
to place under it certain common phenomena of modern 
commercial life. - 

| 3. For the same reason this classification is not, and no 
such classification can be, perfect. It is like an index to a 
book; there must be some cross references. It is like a set 
of pigeon-holes or envelopes in which the student places his 
memoranda and his scraps ; some of them he is puzzled where 
to put, for they belong in two or three separate compart- 
ments, and might go with about equal propriety in either one. 
The student, therefore, must not take this classification as 
though it were a topographical map of the human mind ; a 



ANAL YSIS OF HUMAN NA TURE. 33 

picture of what the mind is, though possibly to be improved 
and corrected by future explorations and surveys. He must 
take it as a suggested Index Rerum, for the better arrangement 
of mental and moral phenomena. If he observes mental and 
moral phenomena, which he cannot find a place for in the 
tabular view here suggested, he must enlarge it ; or, if he 
finds it easier to arrange phenomena here divided into two or 
three compartments under one, he is at liberty to omit whatever 
seem to him superfluous titles. The main thing for every 
reader of this little treatise is to study human nature — in life, 
in fiction, in history — for himself, and use this analysis just in 
so far as it aids him in that independent and original study, 
and no further. 

4. It is further to be remembered that even if the mental 
and moral powers be regarded as real and separable powers 
of the mind, they certainly do not act independently of each 
other. We sometimes hear it said of a man, in criticism of 
him, that he acted from mixed motives. Every man always 
acts from mixed motives. His clashing desires act upon each 
other, and his action is the result not of any one impulse, but 
of several impulses of unequal force combining together. 
Man may be compared to a croquet ball upon the lawn ; the 
principal motive to the mallet which gives him a first direc- 
tion ; but the unevenness of the ground and the other balls 
give new and different directions to his activity, and the final 
direction which he takes is the sum of all their influences. 
Only the more confirmed and inveterate miser acts under the 
impulse of acquisitiveness alone. In nearly all men it is 
variously modified by self-esteem, approbativeness, conscien- 
tiousness, combativeness and destructiveness, benevolence ; 
and the conduct of life is in no two men exactly the same, 
because in no two men is the sum of their various impulses 
the same. In unriddling man the student must take account 
of all these various and often antagonistic forces within him. 
Thus, for example, when Adam Bede saw Hetty and Captain 
2* 



34 A STUD Y IN HUMAN NA TURE. 

Dormithorne kiss and part in the woods, he is described as 
being in a tumult of contending emotions. If we may turn 
the drama into cold analytical psychology, we might say that 
his amativeness or love for Hetty, and his self-esteem or 
wounded self-love, both of which were strong passions in 
him, impelled him to punish Hetty's unconscious enemy and 
his own, while reverence for one socially so much his supe- 
rior held him in check, and conscience bade him rebuke 
but not revenge. When at last he gave way, and struck the 
blow which stretched Captain Dormithorne senseless, it was 
because for the moment amativeness and self-esteem proved 
too strong for reverence and conscience; when he stopped to 
lift up his prostrate foe, restore him to consciousness, and 
bring him to his home, it was because conscience, rever- 
ence, and benevolence — the latter aroused to pity by the 
helplessness of his enemy — re-asserted their sovereignty once 
more. Thus no action in life can be attributed to any one 
faculty. Nearly every action is the result of composite 
forces. 

5. Especially is it important to bear in mind that the 
lower faculties are affected and often revolutionized in their 
activities by the higher faculties. No faculty is sinful, and 
no faculty is free from the possibility of sin ; it is the office 
of religion to make the spiritual dominate the animal and the 
social nature ; such domination changes radically every activ- 
ity. Thus the animal appetites, if left unregulated, lead to 
the grossest gluttony ; to excesses so bestial that we shudder 
at the mere recital of them. But those same appetites, re- 
strained by conscience and guided by reason, become the 
instruments for building up the body in physical health and 
strength, and making all its organs fit instruments for the 
mind and soul. The sexual instinct left to itself runs riot in 
all horrible forms of sensuality and lust. But purified by 
faith, regulated by conscience and reason, and mated to love, 
it becomes the most sacred of all earthly ties, and the foun- 



ANAL YSIS OF HUMAN NA TURE. 35 

dation of the most sacred and essential of all earthly institu- 
tions — the family. Whether acquisitiveness becomes an 
incentive to plundering greed, or productive industry; 
whether combativeness and destructiveness become incen- 
tives to pillage and war, or simply the supports to a great 
Protestant Reformation or a great war of Emancipation ; 
whether caution makes its possessor a coward and an apos- 
tate, or the wise and courageous defender of sacred interests 
intrusted to him ; whether his self-esteem makes him a 
haughty Gregory the Great, or an unbendable William the 
Silent, depends upon the presence or absence, the power or 
weakness of the spiritual faculties, and the consequent influ- 
ence they exert in transforming the lower nature, and giving 
its powers a new activity and crowning them with a new life. 

With these preliminary explanations I proceed to our 
analysis. 

The most natural division of the powers of the soul is into 
two great classes : the Motive Powers and the Acquisitive 
Powers. By the Motive Powers, I mean those which supply 
motive, force, impulse, power; by the Acquisitive Powers, 
those which furnish information, knowledge, truth. The 
Motive Powers again are divided into the Animal Impulses, 
which are necessary to the support and protection of life ; 
the Social and Industrial Impulses, which make man a social 
being and underlie his social existence ; and the Spiritual 
Impulses, which are peculiar to him, and distinguish him 
from the mere animal creation. The Acquisitive Powers 
again are divided into the Sensuous, the Supersensuous, and 
the Reflective. This classification, with the suggested facul- 
ties under each division, will be found at the end of the book 
in a tabular form. 



36 A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE ANIMAL IMPULSES. 

i. There are certain motive powers which are essential to 
the support of animal existence. These are the appetites 
necessary to the support of the individual, and the sexual 
passion necessary to the support of the race. There still 
lingers in the Church and in religious teachers a remnant of 
the old Gnostic philosophy which made all sin to consist in 
the body, and therefore treated all fleshly appetites and de- 
sires as sinful. Men still regard appetite and the sexual 
desire as sinful, because they lead to so much and so palpa- 
ble evil, and it must be conceded that there are phrases in 
the New Testament, especially in Paul's Epistles, which, if 
taken out of their due order and connection, give some color 
to this view. But the teaching of the New Testament, includ- 
ing that of Paul, if taken in its entirety, gives no warrant to this 
false philosophy of human life. On the contrary, Paul explic- 
itly warns the Colossians not to be subject to the rule of this 
ascetic philosophy of life, " Touch not, taste not, handle 
not ; " and to the Philippians he declares that he knows how 
to abound as well as how to suffer want. What the Bible 
condemns is the supremacy of these animal appetites and 
desires over the intellectual and spiritual nature. They are 
the lowest of all the impulses, and should be subordinate. 
When they demand control they are in revolt ; when they 
obtain control the soul is in anarchy. Then the mob has 
mastery of the palace, and destruction is inevitable. The 
appetite has for its principal function to induce the individ- 
ual to take such food and fluid as is necessary to supply the 
waste of the body and keep it in a good physical condition. 



THE ANIMAL IMPULSES. 37 

Connected with it is a palate which accepts some articles of 
diet and rejects others. Both the palate and the appetite 
may become diseased ; their action is rarely absolutely 
healthy, and never infallible ; but a desire for a particular 
article of food is generally a sign — though often a misleading 
one — that the body needs that particular article, or at least 
the material which that article supplies. ' In the case of two 
boys, brothers, one of whom is very fond of sweets, the other 
of acids, the desire in each case is an indication of the needs 
of the two organizations. So a craving for meat in one, and 
a distaste for it in another, is an indication that the one re- 
quires and the other does not require it. If the body were 
perfectly healthy, and in a perfectly natural environment, the 
appetite would be a reasonably, possibly an entirely, safe 
guide. This is not, however, the case. Diseased appetites, 
unnatural and unhealthy desires, have been handed down 
from generation to generation. Civilization has brought 
many influences to bear upon man which produce unnatural 
desires. A fever produces an intense craving for water, 
w T hich is due, not to a real want of more liquid in the system, 
but to an unusual heat which craves cooling. So overwork 
and overexcitement produce a demand for stimulants ; bad 
air and bad food a demand for too much nutriment, or 
perhaps a distaste for all. The ill-educated palate requires 
sweets or spices. The dyspeptic's hunger is no indication 
of a need of food, and his sense of overfullness is no indica- 
tion that he has nutriment enough. In a word, the instincts 
are very far from being a safe and trustworthy guide to be 
undeviatingly followed. They are symptoms whose real sig- 
nificance the reason must consider and interpret before they 
can be followed with safety. 

2. In a similar manner the sexual passion is essential to 
the perfection of the race. It repeats and emphasizes the 
divine command given by God to our first parents : " Be 
fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth." Without it 



33 A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE, 

the family would be impossible. Our children ought to be 
early taught by their parents its sacred significance and its 
value. They ought not to be left to learn about it from often 
immoral and always ignorant companions. They ought not 
to be punished for falling into a habit of self-indulgence 
against which they have never been warned. This strange, 
mysterious desire, w r hich always accompanies health and 
vigor, and which prompts both to the purest love and the 
most bestial excesses, cannot be eradicated, for God has 
planted it in man ; it should be early directed by the child's 
natural guardian and teacher. As with the individual, so 
with society ; the social evils which grow out of the sexual 
appetite are various and deadly. They are often fostered 
directly by unscrupulous men for purposes of gain, from mo- 
tives of avarice. They can be checked somewhat bylaw; 
but so long as appetite exists, so long the sins of appetite 
will continue to poison society ; and the only real and radical 
remedy is that education and that spiritual development 
which brings the appetites themselves into subordination to 
the law of God as revealed to and written in the higher 
nature. Law can protect society from these evils in some 
measure ; but no law can eradicate them. Nothing can do 
that but the subjection of the appetite and the supremacy of 
the spirit. 

3. Next to the appetites and passions come the impulses 
of combativeness and destructiveness. The former were 
necessary to the support of life ; these are necessary to its 
protection. Man is surrounded by enemies ; enemies to his 
existence and to his progress ; enemies to his physical and to 
his spiritual well-being. He needs, therefore, to be endowed 
with certain powers of combativeness and destructiveness ; 
powers which enable him to stand up strongly, contend 
bravely, and destroy utterly. The exercise of these faculties 
of combativeness and destructiveness is commanded also to 
our first parents in the Garden in the law, " Subdue it [the 



THE ANIMAL IMPULSES. 39 

earth] and have dominion." This man could not do unless 
he were fitted to be a combatant ; without both the powers 
and the instinct of combat, he could not conquer nature, 
subdue the wilderness, battle with the wild beasts, and so 
tame the world to be his dwelling-place. For this he must 
have the moral as well as the material force ; the impulse as 
well as the nerve and the muscle. The possession of these 
qualities give force, energy, courage, pluck, push. They are 
seen in every pioneer, in every great captain, in every man 
of large success. Without this power Luther could never 
have burned the Pope's bull in the court-yard at Wittenberg; 
nor could Paul have faced the mob from the stairs of the 
Tower of Antonia; nor could Christ have driven the traders 
from the temple courts. It is this which made him the Lion of 
the tribe of Judah. A single individual may be an estima- 
ble member of society without it; for others about him, 
stronger and more courageous than himself, will do his bat- 
tling for him, and he will compensate by other and gentler 
services. But the human race could not survive its loss. It 
would be overborne and perish from its own weakness and 
imbecility. This gives power of punishment to all govern- 
ments. It is at the root of every form of wrath and indigna- 
tion. It enables the parent to punish his child ; the govern- 
ment to punish crime. It breaks out in lynch law against the 
desperado. It may become the instrument of any other 
faculty. Serving acquisitiveness, it becomes predatory, and 
makes its possessor a robber and a plunderer; serving con- 
science, it becomes an honorable courage, and makes its 
possessor a guardian of the interests of his home or his 
state from the robber or the anarchist. The lack of it 
begets irresolution, eifeminacy, weakness, cowardice ; its 
excess, or ill-direction, or ill-control, begets quarrelsome- 
ness, a disputatious spirit, the gladiator, whether with 
muscle or brain, cruelty, rapine, murder. It is indispen- 
sable to the existence of mankind, but it is also one of the 



40 A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE. 

prolific sources of all that is inhuman in history and in 
life.* 

4. Akin in its object, but contrasted by its nature with 
combativeness and destructiveness, is cautiousness. The 
one protects by fight, the other by flight. The one is the lion 
in man, the other is the hare. The commingling of the two 
constitutes true courage ; for there is no true courage with- 
out a perception of danger and a desire to avoid it. Caution 
is one of the restraining impulses, holding men back from 
too sudden, too aggressive, and too heedless action. It com- 
pels them to pause, to reflect, to consider. It is a rein ; 
combativeness and destructiveness are spurs. It is strongest 
in women ; is seen in its worst aspects in effeminate men. It 
is the cause of all cowardice ; leads to concealments ; is man- 
ifested in ordinary social life in the sensitive disposition of 
the timid ; often underlies a vacillating disposition ; is the 
most common cause of deception and falsehood ; and should 
be counteracted always by hope, courage, conscience, love; 
almost never by severe punishment. It is invaluable as a 
restraining and counteracting faculty ; when it becomes the 
dominant motive, it is fatal to forcefulness and efficiency of 
character. 

5. Among the impulses whose object is a preservation of 
existence must also be put the love of offspring. So much 
has been said and written about parental love, about mothers' 
love especially, that it may seem to the reader doubtful 
whether this impulse belongs here among the lower animal 
impulses. But a moment's reflection will convince him that 
the love of offspring is in its lowest forms a purely animal 
instinct ; seen in the cat's care for her kitten, the hen's for 
her chickens, the cow's for her calf in every farm-yard ; seen 
also, alas ! as a mere blind serm-sensual instinct, in many "a 

* The phrenologist generally distinguishes between combativeness and destructiveness. 
But they are so nearly akin, that I think any discrimination between them is rather con- 
fusing than helpful in analysis. 



THE ANIMAL IMPULSES. 41 

home, where the father or mother cannot bear to inflict pain, 
or thwart a desire, or permit a disappointment, or allow a 
burden, and so the child grows up, coddled and tended, to 
be weak and wayward and willful, and often worse. This 
parental instinct, guided and inspired by the higher nature, 
is the child's guardian from present evil, and guide into future 
manhood; but unguided and uninspired, it protects only from 
pain, which is God's method of discipline, and seeking only 
happiness, guides often into destruction and misery. It is, 
too, quite evident that it is necessary for the protection of 
existence ; for the infant, whether of man or animal, is rarely 
able at first to protect himself; the higher his rank in the 
scale of being the greater the necessity for protection ; and 
if there were no parental instinct, if there was nothing but a 
general and distributed sentiment of pity, he would certainly 
suffer greatly, and would generally die for want of the power 
in himself of self-protection. The parental instinct endows 
him with all the faculties and powers of his parent, especially 
with those of his mother — for in both brutes and men this in- 
stinct is almost invariably the strongest in the female — until 
his own powers have attained sufficient growth to make him 
able to protect himself. 



42 A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE. 



CHAPTER VII. 
THE SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL IMPULSES. 

i. At the foundation of the social organization in all its 
various manifestations is the social instinct. The phrenolo- 
gists call it adhesiveness. Some animals are gregarious, 
others are solitary. Man is gregarious. The recluse is an 
exception. There is but one Thoreau. Solitary imprison- 
ment is the most dreaded of all penalties. Men are impelled 
to associate together in political, industrial, and social enter- 
prises. Their intercourse in these associations is regulated 
in a large measure by the spiritual impulses, of which we 
shall have something to say in the next chapter. But the as- 
sociation itself is a necessity of human nature irrespective of 
the ulterior advantages to be gained from it. 

Bain attempts, but not very successfully, to account for 
the social instinct by the fact that it is a means to an end. 
We associate, according to him, to gratify our benevolent 
impulses ; to get aid from others in our life and its undertak- 
ings ; to gratify our love of power or of applause, and the 
like. These most certainly intensify the social instinct; but 
the social instinct exists independent of them. A man may 
be very social and yet supremely selfish ; he may dread iso- 
lation and yet be cynical. Sociality is a primary fact of hu- 
man nature. There is a molecular attraction which draws 
men together. Humanity instinctively coalesces as drops of 
water in a stream. 

2. Doubtless one of the chief promoters and regulators of 
this social instinct is approbativeness, or the love of praise. 
Mr. Darwin regards it, I think wholly without good ground, 
as constituting the basis of conscience. But unquestionably 



THE SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL IMPULSES. 43 

it re-enforces conscience in some cases, and serves as a very 
poor substitute for it in others. It promotes, if it does not 
produce, what we commonly call good nature. This is very 
different from benevolence. The good-natured man does 
not live to produce the greatest amount of good to the great- 
est number, nor even to his immediate neighbor. He tries 
to please him not to build him up, and is often as ready to 
do him a real injury as a real benefit, if it will win the reward 
of approbation at the time. He that is governed by appro- 
bativeness is a prey to many and sometimes seemingly diverse 
faults. He is easily discouraged, and not easily satisfied. 
The more he is praised the more praise he demands. He is 
guided and often governed by the opinions of others. He is 
rarely strong unless his approbativeness is more than balanced 
by some other motive, self-esteem, for example, or conscien- 
tiousness. This is the secret source of the human passion 
for " glory ; " for it, as expressed by a medal, the scholar 
toils and the soldier fights. It is universal ; perhaps of all 
the motive powers the most various in its activity and the 
most pervasive though not the most powerful in its effects. 

" The love of praise, howe'er concealed by art, 
Reigns more or less and glows in every heart ; 
The proud to gain it, toils on toils endure, 
The modest shun it, but to make it sure." 

When it is the foundation of character it lures on to in- 
evitable moral ruin. The man who makes approbativeness 
a rubstitute for conscience has no other standard of right and 
wrong than the opinion of his own public, which is a far less 
trustworthy standard even than public opinion. He becomes 
a chameleon, changing his character and his opinions to suit 
the company he is in, and doing it instinctively, unconscious- 
ly, and in a sense honestly. When he loses the approbation 
of his fellow-men he loses the last restraint and incentive. 
The history of Aaron Burr is the history of a man of brilliant 



44 A STUD Y IN HUMAN NA TURE. 

parts, wrecked by the absence of a conscience and the sub' 
stitution as a moral mentor of approbativeness. On the 
other hand, he who lacks approbativeness lacks tact, sympa- 
thy, quick fellowship, readiness to appreciate, or willingness 
to weigh, the feelings and opinions of others. He does not 
assimilate with others, for he is indifferent to their sentiments. 
He is disregardful not always of their real interests, but of 
their wishes and feelings. He does not consider the effect of 
his example on others, and so allows his good to be evil 
spoken of. His self-esteem becomes an intolerable self-con- 
ceit, and his conscience a tyrant over others. He becomes 
pert, angular, rude, boorish. 

3. Self-esteem is sometimes popularly confounded with 
approbativeness; it is in actual experience more commonly 
the antidote thereto. Approbativeness leads us to de- 
sire the approbation of others; self-esteem leads us to de- 
sire our own. Approbativeness asks what will others think 
of us ; self-esteem, what shall we think of ourselves. Self-es- 
teem tends to give its possessor independence of thought, 
individuality of action ; to make him forceful and vigorous. 
It is to be found in nearly all born leaders, whether of 
thought or of action. Its normal and natural exercise pro- 
duces self-reliance and enforces courage. If it is not excess- 
ive, it is a consciousness of power and adds to real strength 
of character. If it is excessive, it is an imaginary conscious- 
ness of power which has no real existence, and is a fatal 
weakness. The divine law of self-esteem is expressed by the 
apostle Paul in the direction to every man, " not to think of 
himself more highly than he ought to think ; but to think 
soberly." A wise, right, and true estimate of one's own 
powers is necessary to their highest and best use. The gen- 
eral who overestimates his forces leads them to defeat ; lie 
who underestimates them does not lead them at all. Self- 
esteem in excess leads to pride, censoriousness, arrogance ; 
it makes its possessor impervious to criticism, and even to 



THE SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL IMPULSES. 45 

the lessons of bitter experience. Whatever his failures, he 
always attributes them to other causes than his own mis- 
takes. He is always too wise to learn. It is the exact op- 
posite of that poverty of spirit which Christ said was the first 
condition of entering the kingdom of heaven. " Seest thou 
a man wise in his own conceit ; there is more hope of a fool 
than of him. ,, On the other hand, the lack of a due and 
proper self-esteem is almost invariably accompanied with an 
excess of approbativeness. The result is a weak and vacil- 
lating character. A man who has no confidence in the wis- 
dom of his judgments or in his power to execute them is 
timid, irresolute, uncertain, dependent upon others, a fol- 
lower of stronger natures, never a leader. Approbativeness 
is the most common weakness of women, self-esteem of men. 
The one neutralizes the other. Both cannot well be in ex- 
cess. He who has an excessive confidence in his own powers 
will be indifferent to the commendation and criticism of his 
fellow-men ; he who has a supreme regard to the opinions of 
his fellow-men will be distrustful of his own. Neither appro- 
bativeness nor self-esteem are necessarily a fault. An illustra- 
tion of a divine form of approbativeness is afforded by Christ's 
parting request to his disciples to preserve his memory 
through all coming ages by a memorial supper. An illustra- 
tion of a divine form of self-esteem is afforded by his decla- 
ration to the Pharisees, " Ye are from beneath, I am from 
above," and by his declaration to his disciples, "Ye call me 
Master and Lord : and ye say well; for so I am," 

4. The love of acquisition appears to be a primary and in- 
stinctive impulse of the human soul. It is, indeed, seen in 
some of the higher animals, especially in the bee and the 
ant; but it belongs to the social rather than to the animal 
nature; it is pre-eminently human. Unquestionably this de- 
sire is stimulated by the advantages conferred by acquisition ; 
it is a means to an end ; and from the boy struggling for a 
toy, to the man struggling for a larger bank account, some 



46 A STUD Y IN HUMAN NA TURE. 

real or imaginary pleasure derived from the possession is 
generally and perhaps always in view. But there appears to 
be a pleasure in new possessions apart from the uses and enjoy- 
ments which they afford. At all events, whether acquisitive- 
ness be regarded as a primary and fundamental motive power, 
or only the working out of other motive powers of the mind, it 
enters so largely into human life that it may well be regarded 
as a distinct impulse. It is the mainspring of industry ; the 
secret pow T er of material civilization. It is the love of acqui- 
sition which has opened a highway for commerce across be- 
fore untrodden seas, bridged the continents with iron high- 
ways, opened the hidden wealth in gold and silver and iron 
mines, brought lumber from the forests and coal from the 
hills, plowed the prairies and harvested the plain where the 
bison once roamed, founded cities on the site of the wigwam. 
It has been a greater motive power than conscience ; it has 
achieved more for mankind than benevolence. It has 
sheathed the sword and forged the plowshare; has con- 
quered combativeness ; has turned man from a wild beast 
into a domestic animal, from a destroyer into a producer. 
But this is all. It is without a moral character or a moral 
purpose. Guided by reason it avoids criminal dishonesties, 
because reason sees that wealth acquired by methods which 
arouse the indignation of mankind is never permanent. But 
it is the secret of covetousness and avarice. It is the parent 
of the gambling-house and the liquor-saloon. It is embodied 
in all speculative operations. Unrestrained by conscience it 
is dishonest, untempered by benevolence it is cruel. It is a 
root of all evil. They that are controlled by it, that will be 
rich, fall into a snare. It is at once the most useful and the 
most despicable of the social motives. 

5, Closely allied to it is the constructive instinct ; the in- 
clination to build, to put together; prominently manifested 
in all engineers, engravers, and mechanics. Employed in 
the intellectual realm its work appears in more subtle forms. 



THE SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL IMPULSES. 47 

The writer who possesses it constructs his work with skill, 
though it may be barren of ornament or fancy ; the preacher 
endowed with it makes a good skeleton though he may utter- 
ly fail to infuse it with the life of human sympathy and feel- 
ing. It is the secret of all modern mechanics, and of very 
much of modern practical science. It is the opposite of 
destructiveness ; is witnessed in any eminent degree only in 
the higher stages of civilization ; and is, perhaps, the highest 
of all the social instincts. Its manifestations are witnessed 
in lower forms in the animal creation, as in the bee and the 
beaver ; but it is essentially a human and social instinct. 

6. The tendency to imitate, of which in the animal crea- 
tion illustrations are seen in the parrot, the mocking-bird, 
and the ape, is also a human instinct. It is seen in all forms 
of mimicry ; enters largely into every phase of dramatic 
representation, from that of dramatic oratory, like that of John 
B. Gough, to that of the stage ; underlies much of the power 
and beauty of art in its less exalted forms ; and is the basis of 
much of our educational system. It is this inclination on the 
part of humanity, especially of the young, to imitate the ac- 
tions of others, which gives such power both for good and 
for evil to example. It is this which makes leadership pos- 
sible ; for there can be no leadership without an inclination 
to follow the leader. It induces men to take their opinions 
from others; to copy the actions of others; to model their 
characters after others. It is strongest in the young, or in 
the crude and uneducated. John Chinaman given a plate as 
a model, in which there happens to be a crack, makes each 
of the dozen with a corresponding crack. The boy smokes, 
not because he likes the cigar, which sickens him on a first 
and even a second or third trial, but because he sees his 
elders smoke. Approbativeness and imitativeness work to- 
gether. They are harnessed as in a span. Without the in- 
stinct of imitation, society would tend to lapse into a mere 
congeries of individuals ; it would learn from the experience 



4 S A STUD Y IN HUMAN NA TURE. 

of the past very slowly, if at all. On the other hand, excess- 
ive imitativeness destroys all individuality and independence 
of character, and reduces the man to an automaton, who 
moves only in drill, and does nothing except in blind imita- 
tion of a supposed superior. 

7. To these social instincts should probably be added also 
the instinct of local attachment. It is certain that some per- 
sons become very strongly attached to places ; others have 
no such attachment. It is said that the cat is attached to 
the house, the dog to the master. The one pines for the 
house, the other for the man. A like difference is seen in 
men. Generally women have stronger local attachments than 
men. A rude violation of this instinct is one of the chief 
causes of home-sickness. A principal value of it is a certain 
kind of local stability. Without it all men would be, as are 
the Bedouin Arabs, nomadic. 



THE SPIRITUAL IMPULSES. 49 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE SPIRITUAL IMPULSES. 

Man is distinguished from the rest of the animal creation 
by his moral and spiritual nature. The distinction recog- 
nized in the earlier books of mental science between reason 
and instinct is now largely abandoned. There are instinctive 
and almost automatic actions, as there are intelligent and 
thoughtful ones ; but the distinction between the brute and 
the man is not in the possession of mere instinct by the one 
and of reason by the other. Man sometimes acts from in- 
stinct ; he does so whensoever he follows blindly one of the 
impulses which we have described above, without stopping to 
submit the proposed action to the questions and directions of 
his reasoning powers. On the other hand, there are abundant 
evidences of the possession and use of reasoning power by 
the brute creation, though in very crude forms and within 
very narrow limitations. The dog, the horse, the elephant, 
consider, reflect, reason. They exercise the faculty of caus- 
ality and comparison, of which we shall have something to 
say in a subsequent chapter. But there is no indication what- 
ever of the possession or exercise by them of any moral dis- 
crimination, or of any spiritual power. It is the moral and 
spiritual powers of which we are now about to speak which 
distinguish man from the brute. Brutes reason as truly as 
men ; but every man is a law unto himself, while the brutes 
are subject to law only as they are brought under it by a su- 
perior force. They do not rule themselves by recognized 
laws of right and wrong. The only law recognized is the 
law of the strongest. All men worship ; the exceptions, if 
there are any, are so few as to be insignificant. Every nation 
3 



5 o A STUD Y IN HUMAN NA TURE. 

has its religion or its superstition, its god or its demon, its 
temple or its fetish. There is no indication of any thing 
analogous to worship among the brutes; they have houses, 
but no temple; social organization, but no revealed law; 
domestic instincts, but no spirit of universal benevolence. 

i. Conscience is the factor which recognizes the inherent 
and essential distinction between right and wrong, and which 
impels to the right and dissuades from the wrong. It does 
not come within the province of this book to discuss either 
the basis of ethics or its laws ; to consider either why some 
things are wrong and others are right, nor to point out what 
is wrong and what is right. That belongs to moral science, 
not to mental science. It must suffice here to say that the 
distinction between right and wrong is recognized in all 
peoples, and is one of the first objects of perception in child- 
hood. Standards differ in different races and in different 
ages. The power of moral discrimination is subject to edu- 
cation both for good and for evil. But the sense of ought is 
as universal as the sense of beauty. That there is a right and 
a wrong is as evident to every mind as that there is a wise 
and a foolish, a beautiful and an ugly, a pleasant and a dis- 
agreeable. There are things pleasant and things repulsive 
to the moral sense, as there are things pleasant and things 
repulsive to the eye and to the palate ; there is a sense of 
right and wrong as there is a sense of beauty and a sense of 
taste. It has been a matter of great debate among philoso- 
phers what is the ground of right and wrong. We cannot 
here enter into this debate. I shall assume, what is by no 
means universally conceded, that it is a primary fact in life ; 
that the right is right and the wrong is wrong, irrespective 
both of commands and consequences ; that the right is right 
not because God commanded, but God commands it because 
it is right ; and it is right not because it produces happiness, 
but it produces happiness because it is right. That it would 
still be right though it produced misery instead of happiness, 



THE SPIRITUAL IMPULSES, 51 

and was forbidden, not commanded; that it is as truly the 
law of God's nature as of man's nature ; and that if we could 
conceive his commanding any of his children to do what is 
not right it would change, not the character of the action, but 
his own character. I assume, too, that as right and wrong 
are primary facts of human life, so the faculty which recog- 
nizes that fact, and which impels men to do right and to 
eschew wrong, is a primary faculty. Men are to be guided 
by their judgment in determining what is right and what is 
wrong; but the judgment does not determine that there is a 
right and a wrong. Their sense of right and wrong is clari- 
fied or obscured, their impulse to the right and away from 
the wrong is strengthened or weakened, by other faculties ; 
but it is not dependent upon them. Approbativeness may 
lead them to do what other people think to be right ; but 
desire for the approbation of others is not conscience, nor 
the ground nor basis of conscience.* Self-esteem may 
strengthen their purpose to do right, and so win their own 
approval ; but self-esteem is not conscience, and self-esteem 
and conscience may come into direct conflict. Benevolence 
may add its persuasions to the impulse of conscience, and 
the man may be impelled to do right because doing right 
will also do good to others. But this is not the ground of 
his conviction that there is a right ; and the right may even 
seem to be fraught with irreparable injury and no compensa- 
tory good to others, and so benevolence and conscience come 
in conflict. The recognition of right and wrong and the im- 
pulse to right and away from wrong is original, primary, 
causeless, one of the simple and indivisible powers of the 
soul of man. I cannot better state this truth — I have no 
space here to argue it — than in the words of Professor Hux- 
ley, who will certainly not be accused of any undue orthodox 
proclivities : 

* As Darwirt makes it. See his " Emotions in Animals and Man." 



52 A STUD Y IN HUMAN NA TURE. 

"Justice is founded on the love of one's neighbor; and 
goodness is a kind of beauty. The moral law, like the laws 
of physical nature, rests in the long run upon instinctive in- 
tuitions, and is neither more nor less innate and necessary 
than they are. Some people cannot by any means be got 
to understand the first book of Euclid ; but the truths of 
mathematics are no less necessary and binding on the great 
mass of mankind. Some there are who cannot feel the dif- 
ference between the Sonata Apassionata and Cherry Ripe; or 
between a grave-stone cutter's cherub and the Apollo Belve- 
dere ; but the canons of art are none the less acknowledged. 
While some there may be who, devoid of sympathy, are 
incapable of a sense of duty ; but neither does their existence 
affect the foundations of morality. Such pathological devia- 
tions from true manhood are merely the halt, the lame, the 
blind of the world of consciousness; and the anatomist of the 
mind leaves them aside, as the anatomist of the body would 
ignore abnormal specimens."* 

It is hardly necessary to point out the function or dwell 
upon the necessity of conscience in human life. It is funda- 
mental to all that is human in life. Without it men would be 
brutes ; society would be wholly predatory ; the only law 
recognized would be the law of the strongest ; the only re- 
straint on cupidity would be self-interest. There could be 
neither justice nor freedom. Trade would be a perpetual 
attempt at the spoliation of one's neighbor. Law could be 
enforced only by fear, and government would be of necessity 
a despotism. The higher faculties uninfluenced by con- 
science would rapidly degenerate. Reverence would no 
longer be paid to the good and the true, but only to the 
strong and the terrible ; religion would become a supersti- 
tion ; God a demon ruling by fear, not by law ; punishment 
a torment inflicted by hate and wrath, not a penalty sanc- 

* M English Men of Letters : Hume," by Prof. Huxley. Harper & Brothers, p. 206. 



THE SPIRITUAL IMPULSES. 53 

tioned by conscience for disregard of its just and necessary- 
laws ; and benevolence itself, unregulated by a sense of right 
and wrong, would become a mere sentiment, following with 
its tears the robber as readily as the Messiah to his crucifix- 
ion, and strewing its flowers as lavishly on the grave of the 
felon as on that of the martyr. In history have been seen 
all these exhibitions, not of the absolute elimination of con- 
science from human life, for conscience has never been 
wholly wanting in the most degraded epoch of the most 
degraded nation, but of its obscuration and its effeminacy. 

It is, perhaps, more needful to remark that the evils of a 
character whose conscience is not controlled by other and 
still higher faculties are quite as great. Conscience combined 
with self-esteem, uninstructed by faith and unrestrained by 
benevolence, is the most remorseless and cruel of impulses. 
The ingenious persecutions which it invented and inflicted in 
the Middle Ages on the Protestants of Italy, Spain, France, 
and the Netherlands, far exceeded those which mere brutal 
combativeness and destructiveness inflicted on the Jews in 
the reign of Nero. It is not enough that a man be con- 
scientious. He may be conscientious and self-conceited ; in 
that case he will be exacting and despotic, making his own 
conscience a law for all his neighbors. He may be con- 
scientious and approbative ; in that case he will be weak, 
afraid, and always tormented lest he has not done what to 
his neighbors will seem to be right. He may be conscien- 
tious without faith ; in that case he will be constantly led 
into false judgments by a tendency to measure the moral 
quality of every act by its immediate effect. He may have a 
merely retroactive conscience ; in that case he will fail to 
look forward and prepare for what he is to do by measuring 
proposed action by the standard of right and wrong; he will 
be habitually looking back and tormenting himself, and per- 
haps others as well, by perpetually trying himself for actions 
past and beyond recall. He may use his conscience not as 



54 A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE. 

the restraining motive of his life, but as the impelling motive, 
not as the governor, but as the steam ; in that case he will 
have nothing of the joy of the perfect love which casteth out 
fear, but will always act under the spur of necessity, never in 
the freedom of those who through faith and love have entered 
into the liberty of the sons of God. It is not enough to have 
a conscience, and a masterful conscience ; it must be a good 
conscience ; a conscience that forecasts ; that acts in restrain- 
ing rather than in impelling ; that is instructed by faith, not 
by sight ; that is united to benevolence rather than to appro- 
bativeness and self-esteem. 

2. Reverence. There is in man an instinct inclined to 
look up, to admire, to reverence. Something akin to it, 
something certainly illustrative of it, is seen in the apparent 
mental attraction of the best and most intelligent dogs toward 
their masters. But in the brute it is apparently dependent 
largely on physical services rendered and on fear. It is seen 
in man in various forms in the social organism, and is in one 
sense a social instinct, as also is conscience. But in its higher 
manifestations it is essentially both human and spiritual. It 
is the basis of all wonder, admiration, awe, reverence.* It is 
the foundation of that awe which we feel in the presence of 
the great and sublime in nature: the vast wilderness, the 
towering mountain, the starry heavens. Fear sometimes, but 
by no means always, enters into its existence ; the two 
emotions are indeed often in absolute contrast, so that one 
hardly knows whether to fear or to rejoice. It enters into 
our experience of admiration of human handiwork, in art, 
mechanics, architecture. It is the basis of social distinctions, 
especially as they are seen in countries where hereditary 
classes exist, and the lower class is habituated to looking up 
to the class above it, where looking up is as easy and as natural 

* The phrenologists recognize two faculties, one of reverence, the other of marvel- 
ousness. This seems to me a needless and doubtful distinction. Essentially and at root 
they are the same. 



THE SPIRITUAL IMPULSES. 55 

as for an American to look off. It is the instinct of the child 
toward the parent, making it easy for the one to obey and 
the other to enforce the command, " Honor thy father and 
thy mother," a command often read as though it were, what 
it is not, Obey thy father and mother. It is seen in every 
form and phase of worship. It impels men every- where to a 
belief in some superior Being, known or unknown, imagined 
or unimagined, but deserving and demanding and receiving 
reverence. It exhibits itself alike in the devotee bowing be- 
fore his hideous image in his magnificent Hindu temple, in 
the Friend lifting up his heart in silent adoration to the in- 
visible Spirit, and in the spirit of wonder and of awe with 
which the seemingly undevout scientist approaches the con- 
fines of the visible world and looks off and seeks to fathom 
the beyond, and returns shaking his head in intellectual de- 
spair, saying it is the Unknown and the Unknowable. It is 
ignored by atheists, and therefore atheism has never made 
many converts, and never can. It is an essential and inde- 
structible principle of human nature. 

But this faculty is no more free from dangerous propensities 
than the lower social and industrial impulses. It is as dan- 
gerous when ill-educated and misdirected as acquisitiveness 
or self-esteem. If for lack of it men grow skeptical, infidel, 
atheistic Godward and cynical manward, inclined to take 
low views of man and none at all of God, its excess leads to 
idolatry and every form of superstition, to worshiping the 
unworshipful and reverencing that which is not venerable. 
Mated to conscience and self-esteem it produces bigotry ; 
uninstructed by faith it begets idolatry or the worship of the 
visible, and therefore the unreal ; combined with fear it 
begets superstition, the worship not of what is to be vener- 
ated, but of what is to be dreaded. 

3. Benevolence. By benevolence is meant the impulse 
which leads its possessor to wish well to all other beings. It 
is an innate, not an acquired, quality of the mind. It exists 



56 A STUD Y IN HUMAN NA TURE. 

in all men, though in many buried and almost destroyed by 
the pre-eminence of other faculties. It has its weak side 
and its defects. Uninstructed by faith it desires merely the 
happiness, not the welfare of men, and sacrifices without hes- 
itation their real and permanent good for their apparent and 
present pleasure. Mated to approbativeness it becomes a 
mere instinct or impulse of good nature. Unregulated by 
conscience it is indiscriminating, a mawkish and morbid sen- 
timentality. But it is of all the impulses the one whose 
vices are the least dangerous, and whose virtues are the most 
beneficent to mankind. Coupled with veneration, and look- 
ing up to a superior, especially to God, it redeems worship 
from fear, and makes it ennobling, elevating, purifying. 
Looking upon suffering, it is pity ; looking upon sin, it is 
mercy; looking upon the well-being of the whole community 
needing protection from sin, it is justice. As an emotion, it 
is sympathy; it weeps with those that weep, it rejoices with 
those that rejoice. As a principle of action, it seeks the 
greatest good of the greatest number. It combines with the 
social instinct to make the family of man more than the nest 
of birds, society more than an ant-hill or a bee-hive. It is 
the secret of patriotism in the State, and is that love which is 
the bond of perfectness in the Church. It is the queen of 
the soul, and he only is truly healthy whose whole nature is 
obedient to love — whose acquisitiveness gathers for it, whose 
combativeness and destructiveness battle for it, whose cau- 
tion fears for its wounding, whose conscience is made tender 
and sympathetic by it, and whose reverence is made fearless 
and filial and joyous by it. It is incapable of analysis ; and 
no description which has ever been penned of it can com- 
pare. for intelligent comprehensiveness and spiritual beauty 
to Paul's psalm of praise to it in the thirteenth chapter of 
i Corinthians : " Love suffereth long, and is kind ; love 
envieth not ; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth 
not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not pro- 



THE SPIRITUAL IMPULSES. 57 

voked, taketh not account of evil; rejoiceth not in unright- 
eousness but rejoiceth with the truth ; beareth all things, be- 
lieveth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." 

4. Phrenologists add to the impulses thus far given several 
others, the two most important being hope and firmness. 
These seem to me to be rather qualities than faculties ; not 
so much impulses to do particular things as a spirit or habit 
which modifies the method of doing all things. Hope gives 
vigor of plan, firmness gives continuity of purpose ; the one 
makes radiant, the other makes strong. Neither are simple 
or primary passions. Both are capable of analysis. Hope 
is desire and expectation commingled. What a man desires 
but does not expect, he does not hope for ; what he expects 
but does not desire, he does not hope for ; what he both 
desires and expects, he hopes for. His expectation may be 
rational or irrational ; his hope is accordingly well or ill 
grounded. Firmness is vigor and persistency combined. It 
is persistence of force. Vigor without persistence produces 
dash and impetuesity ; persistence without vigor produces 
inertia. Health of body has much to do with both qualities. 
Certain diseases invariably produce despondency. Certain 
physical weaknesses invariably produce more or less vacilla- 
tion of purpose. Consciousness of power has much to do 
with both qualities. The man who is conscious of his own 
resources will be hopeful of results when all around him are 
in despair; he will be persistent in his purpose when all 
about him are discouraged and ready to retreat. He may 
be hopeful and firm in certain directions, despondent and 
vacillating in others; firm where conscience is concerned, 
and weak where self-interest is concerned; firm in protect- 
ing the interests of others, and weak inprotecting his own, 
or vice versa. Whether, however, hope and firmness be re- 
garded as impulses, or as temperamental conditions affecting 
all the impulses, they must certainly be taken into account 
in any study of human nature. 
3* 



5 3 A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE ACQUISITIVE POWERS. 

I. The Senses and the Supersensuous. 

What are very generally called the Intellectual Powers 
I call the Acquisitive Powers, because among them is a 
power which is more and higher than the Intellect ; which 
at all events it is wise for us to distinguish from the Intel- 
lectual, as that phrase is ordinarily used. 

i. The Senses. There are five of these: sight, hearing, 
smell, taste, and touch. Some philosophers have, indeed, 
undertaken to show that all the senses are only refined and 
subtle forms of the sense of touch : invisible ether striking 
the eye, waves of air striking the tympanum of the ear, fra- 
grant emissions touching the delicate nerve of the nose, and 
subtle qualities in the food coming in contact with the nerves 
of the palate. But for all practical purposes the old distinc- 
tion between the five senses may be accepted as satisfactory. 
Nor do these five senses require any explanation. We are 
all measurably familiar with them and their exercise. 

2. The Sensuous Faculties. With these senses are con- 
nected sensuous faculties which receive and appropriate and 
appreciate the various facts brought to the knowledge of 
the mind by the senses. We not only perceive the outer 
world, we appreciate qualities in it which the senses them- 
selves know nothing of. Thus a man on horseback emerges 
from a forest upon the top of a high hill, and both look off 
upon the prospect of the valley below. The same picture is 
impressed on the retina of both beast and man, but the same 
emotion and intellectual life is not awakened in both. There 
are in the rider faculties which perceive in the beauty of the 



THE A CQ UISITIVE PO WERS. 59 

view that which is unperceived and unperceivable by the 
horse. Men are said to have or to lack an ear for music; 
the ear itself is struck by the same sound waves, and the 
same impression is made on the auditory nerve of both, but 
the one receives what the other does not and cannot receive. 
So two men may look at the same picture, and see it with 
equal distinctness, but the one who has an eye for art will 
perceive in it much which the other, who has no eye for art, 
fails to perceive. I shall not enter into any elaborate anal- 
ysis of the sensuous faculties, nor into the discussion which 
has been waged concerning them. It is enough for my pur- 
pose in this treatise to point out the more evident ones. 
These are time, space, weight, color, and tune. The pow- 
ers which recognize these qualities or realities are pecul- 
iarly human. Their recognition is very dim, if it exists at 
all, in the brute creation ; it is very clear and absolutely 
necessary in man. We are compelled to think of all events 
as occurring in time, and having a certain time relation to 
each other, as being past, present, or future, as occurring 
before or after. We are compelled, too, to think of them as 
occurring in space, and as having certain relations of locality 
to each other, as being above or below, on this side or that, 
in this locality or another locality. Whether time and space 
are intuitive perceptions, or laws of thought binding upon us 
which compel us to think of things in these relations, or re- 
sults of observation and experience, it is not necessary for us 
here to inquire. In point of fact the recognition of both 
time and space are absolutely universal; the power of recog- 
nizing them exists, however its existence may be explained. 
The same thing must be said of weight, number, color, and 
time. We have the power of discriminating substances not 
merely by their form, that is, the space they occupy, but also 
by their weight or tendency to fall toward the center of the 
earth. We have a power of recognizing numbers, of per- 
ceiving the difference between one and more, of knowing the 



60 A STUD Y IN HUMAN NA TURE. 

relations between these various numbers, and of working out 
of that power of perception the whole science of numbers in 
all its branches. We have the power of distinguishing 
colors, and appreciating what we call beauty of color, that is, 
the combinations of color which tend to produce pleasure 
through the eye on the mind. We perceive in certain com- 
binations of sounds an effect which we call musical. More- 
over, these powers differ very greatly in different men, and 
seem capable of still further analysis. In tune there are a 
variety of effects which seem to differ in kind as well as in 
degree, and the capability to produce or to enjoy these differ- 
ent effects, respectively produce different schools in music, 
each having its own peculiar and characteristic appreciation. 
To these should be added the faculty of language, a faculty 
quite peculiar to man, and differing very widely in different 
races and in different individuals of the same race. 

3. The Super sensuous Faculty. We have arrived at a part- 
ing of the ways. That there is any supersensuous faculty 
much of modern philosophy positively denies ; the existence 
of such a faculty still more of modern philosophy ignores. 
All forms of modern skepticism have a common philosoph- 
ical foundation. Their philosophy denies that we can know 
any thing except that which we learn through the senses di- 
rectly, or through conclusions deduced from the senses. We 
know that there is a sun because we see it ; we know ap- 
proximately its weight and its distance from the earth, be- 
cause by long processes of reasoning we reach conclusions 
on those subjects from phenomena which we do see. What 
we do not thus see, or hear, or touch, or taste, or smell, or 
thus conclude from what we have seen, or heard, or touched, 
or tasted, or smelled, is said to belong to the unknown and 
unknowable. This is the basis of modern skepticism. It is 
the basis, too, of much of modern theology. It is the secret 
of the " scientific method." By this method we conclude the 
existence of an invisible God from the phenomena of life ex- 



THE ACQUISITIVE POWERS. 61 

actly as we conclude the existence of an invisible ether from 
the phenomena of light. But the God thus deduced is like 
the ether, only an hypothesis. It is quite legitimate to offer 
a new hypothesis ; and the scientist will be as ready to accept 
one hypothesis as another, provided it accounts for the phe- 
nomena. This philosophy, pursued to its legitimate and log- 
ical conclusion, issues in the denial that man is a religious 
being; or possesses a spiritual nature ; or is any thing more 
than a highly organized and developed animal. 

Over against this philosophy of human nature I set here 
the doctrine that man possesses a supersensuous faculty.* 
By a supersensuous faculty I mean a power to see the in- 
visible and hear the inaudible; a sixth sense; a spiritual 
perception ; a capacity to take direct and immediate cogni- 
tion of a world lying wholly without the dominion of the 
senses. A man hopelessly blind might well conclude that 
there is such a phenomenon as color from the testimony of 
his friends. A man wholly deaf might well conclude that 
there was a phenomenon of sound from merely observing its 
effects on others. But the phenomena of sight are directly 
and immediately perceived by the eye ; they are not ordina- 
rily derived from observation made only by the ear. So I 
suppose the facts or phenomena of the spiritual life are 
directly and immediately perceived by the spiritual sense ; 
they are not derived from observation made by the other 
senses. The spirit has its eye and its ear. This power 
in art and literature is called the imagination, fancy, ideality ; 
its productions are called creations. In religion it is called 
faith. There is no better definition of it than that afforded 
by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews : " Faith is the 
substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not 
seen." f That is, it is the faculty or power which gives us 

* Not as though it were in any sense a new doctrine ; it is older than Plato, and has 
never been without its representatives and advocates in philosophical thought. 
t Hebrews xi, i. 



62 A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE. 

knowledge of the invisible realities of life. Religion does not 
depend upon a " scientific method. " God is not an hypothe- 
sis. He is known directly and immediately by spiritual con- 
tact, spiritual perception. 

This power of direct perception of a world beyond the 
senses is seen in all great inventors. It is the prophetic 
faculty, and the secret of all progress. Morse sees the tele- 
graph wires carrying his messages over a continent before 
a pole has been set in the ground. Stephenson sees England 
covered with a net-work of railway before a rail has been 
laid. The architect sees his cathedral in the mind before a 
stone is put to rest in its bed of mortar. In all these and 
kindred cases the invisible is seen before it becomes visible ; 
the supersensuous sense perceives it before it can be made 
apparent to the slower appreciation of the senses. It is the 
power which underlies all art, literature, oratory. To imitate 
whether a greensward or a silk dress is not art ; as to declaim 
whether Marco Bozzaris or Hamlet is not oratory. Art is essen- 
tially creative. It brings out of the invisible world invisible 
realities, and so presents them that the dull eyes and ears of 
the unspiritual can perceive them. The artist sees his pict- 
ure before he paints it, and if he be a true artist always sees 
a nobler picture than he paints. He copies from an invisible 
canvas. The author sees the truth which he endeavors, al- 
ways with imperfection, to express; and beneath his dead 
body of a book there beats a living soul which looks out 
through its pages as the soul looks out through the eyes into 
the windows of another soul. This living soul he sees and 
knows just as clearly before as after he has given it a body. 
The orator, more dimly but as truly, sees the truth which he 
endeavors to carry away captive from its shadowy land, and 
his power over his audience lies in his power to interpret to 
their senses and through their senses what he had before 
seen and grasped by his supersensuous faculty, his spiritual 
perception, his faith-power. These invisible realities thus 



THE ACQUISITIVE POWERS. 63 

seen by the soul's sense are not mere copies of something 
which the eye has seen before ; they are not memories, nor 
mere new combinations of objects familiar to the senses. 
They belong to another world. The artist, the author, the 
orator is a true translator into sensuous forms of supersensu- 
ous realities, and always views his best work with a sense of 
dissatisfaction, knowing that no sensuous forces are adequate 
to expound to men who live in the senses what he has seen 
and known. He is ready to exclaim with Jesus : " We speak 
that we do know, and testify that we have seen ; and ye re- 
ceive not our witness." In still higher forms evidence of 
this supersensuous faculty is seen in all our social and do- 
mestic life. Our business, our government, our society, our 
homes, are all built upon it. Without it they must dissolve 
and humanity go back to barbarism and anarchy. All mod- 
ern commerce is dependent on the reality and the incalcu- 
lable value of honor, humanity, integrity ; qualities not seen, 
not easily demonstrable by a " scientific method," but recog- 
nized by all men who possess them and imitated by many 
who do not. Justice, truth, honor, fidelity, courage, patriot- 
ism, are all intangible, invisible qualities. They are not 
seen ; they are not deduced from the seen ; they are instant- 
ly and immediately recognized as realities by the supersen- 
suous sense. Their value is depreciated or ignored by sen- 
sual men. They are qualities unrecognized by the brute. 
This faith-power is the recognized life of the home circle, 
and of all friendships and fellowships. The love of a mother 
for her child is different from the love of a bird for its young, 
or a cow for its calf. The love of husband and wife for each 
other is more than an animal instinct. The tie which binds 
friends together is not sensuous. Identity is not in the feat- 
ures. What we love is the inward, the soul, the mental and 
moral qualities, the patience, gentleness, forbearance, long- 
suffering love, the invisible manhood and womanhood within, 
which the eye does not see, which the reason does not dem- 



6 }. A STUD Y IN HUMAN NA TURE. 

onstrale, which are not hypothetical, which are not ascer- 
tained by any "scientific method," but which are instantly 
and directly and immediately perceived by the power of 
spiritual perception which resides in every spirit. 

But in its highest manifestations this supersensuous faculty 
is seen in the religious life. It is the power which the Bible 
calls faith. Faith is not an intellectual activity deducing con- 
clusions from premises; it is not an act of the will or an im- 
pulse of the affections, though it inspires both. It is a spiritual 
perception, " the substance of things hoped for, the evidence 
of things not seen." By this we perceive the Spirit of God 
behind all nature and immanent in all nature, as we perceive 
the spirit of a man behind the body and immanent in the 
body. Neither are hypotheses to account for phenomena ; 
both are facts instantly and immediately perceived. This is 
the power of which Paul writes when he says, " We look not 
at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not 
seen." This is what he generally means by the word know : 
" we know that the law is spiritual ; " " we know that all things 
work together for good to them that love God ; " "I know 
whom I have believed." In these and kindred passages he 
speaks not of conclusions reached by a " scientific method," 
but of facts realized by a spiritual experience. It is to the 
contrast between the sensuous and the supersensuous, be- 
tween faith and sight, that Christ refers when he promises to 
his disciples another Comforter whom the world cannot re- 
ceive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth (hath experi- 
ence of) him; "but ye know him, because he dwelleth with 
you, and shall be in you." It is to this spiritual sense, dormant 
in even the most unspiritual natures, that Paul refers when in 
Athens he classes himself sympathetically with his pagan 
audience, saying, " In him we live, and move, and have our 
being." This faith-power is the illuminating and transform- 
ing power of the soul. It is that whereby God enters it and 
makes it his own. It is that whereby each faculty is lifted 



THE A CQ UISITIVE TO WERS. 65 

up from a mere earthly and sensuous activity. By faith love 
is converted from a mere wish for happiness into a wish for 
true welfare ; reverence is changed from image worship 
to spiritual worship ; conscience is able to measure the 
issues of right and wrong by their intrinsic and spiritual 
nature, not by the anticipated consequences of action; the 
parental instinct is lifted above a mere animal propensity, 
and is made to become a guide to God and a guardian for 
eternity ; and the very appetites and passions are made to 
minister to the higher, the internal, the spiritual nature. 



66 A STUD Y IN HUMAN NA TURE. 



CHAPTER X. 
THE ACQUISITIVE POWERS. 

II. The Reflective Faculties. 

Man possesses not merely the power to gather both from 
the outer and visible and from the inner and invisible world, 
a power both of sensuous and supersensuous observation ; he 
possesses also a power of classifying and arranging the results 
of his observation, of observing resemblances and contrasts, 
and of drawing conclusions from them. This he does by the 
reflective faculties, or what is in popular language called the 
reason. Formerly it was supposed that the animals did not 
possess this power. A more careful and candid observation 
has brought scientific men to the conclusion that the higher 
animals — notably the dog, the horse, and the elephant — also 
reflect, consider, weigh, judge, compare; in a word, reason, 
though to a very limited extent and within very narrow 
bounds. The contrast between the animals and man is not 
that man possesses reflective faculties and the animals do 
not, but that man possesses apparently an unlimited capacity 
of developing both these and other faculties, while the limits 
are very soon reached in the animal ; and man possesses the 
spiritual faculties — the supersensuous faculty of faith and the 
spiritual impulses of conscience, reverence, and love — in a 
high degree, while they are either entirely wanting in the 
brute, or exist only in the most rudimentary forms. For 
convenience of analysis the reflective faculties may be di- 
vided into two, the Logical faculty and the Comparative fac- 
ulty, or causality and comparison. 

i. It does not make much practical difference whether we 
say that man possesses a faculty by which he perceives the 



THE ACQUISITIVE POWERS. 67 

relation of cause and effect, or that he is under a mental law 
which compels him to think of all phenomena as in the rela- 
tion of cause and effect, or that the truth that every effect 
must have a cause and every cause an effect is intuitively 
and immediately perceived by him, or that the relation of 
cause and effect has been perceived by observation and ex- 
perience through so many generations that he has come to 
expect an effect from every cause and a cause for every 
effect as the result of generations of experience. He not 
only possesses the power, he is laid under a necessity of per- 
ceiving this relation, a relation perceived but dimly if at all 
by the mere animal. This is the power which leads the child 
to ask why, and the man to say therefore. It is the power 
which frames syllogisms, and is compelled to accept the 
conclusion if the premises be granted. It is the power 
which leads the farmer when he sees a pile of upheaved 
earth in his garden to conclude that a mole has burrowed 
there ; which induces the explorer when he discovers the 
earth-mounds in Ohio or the cliff-dwellings in Colorado to 
conclude that man has been there before him; which compels 
men every-where, seeing the marvelous mechanism of nature 
by which he is surrounded and in which he dwells, to be 
sure that some First Great Cause has called it forth. This is 
the power which guides man in his search, whether it be the 
search of the farmer for the hiding mole, the antiquarian for 
the lost race, or the philosopher for an unknown God. It is 
this power which enables us to trace sequence in nature, in 
history, in human experience ; which enables us to see that 
phenomena are not isolated and accidental, but every fact is 
a link in an endless chain. The exercise of this faculty upon 
numbers gives us the higher mathematics, exercised upon 
visible phenomena it produces science, upon mental experi- 
ence it creates history, political economy, mental and moral 
philosophy. Every mechanic relies upon it when he builds 
his engine or constructs his dam, sure that the same cause 



6S A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE. 

will always produce the same effect; every artist depends 
upon it when he mixes his colors, certain that the same mix- 
ture will produce the same shade, and the same touch of the 
brush on the canvas will cause the same effect ; every orator 
assumes it, consciously or unconsciously, when by the utter- 
ance of his own emotions he strives to awaken the emotions 
of his hearers, or by the process of reasoning he expects to 
win the assent of their judgment to his own conclusions. It 
is, indeed, one of the master powers of man's mind, but it is 
not the master power; and when men attempt to make it do 
the work of the supersensuous faculty, when they ignore the 
power given them to perceive directly and immediately the 
invisible world, and attempt in lieu of exercising that faith- 
power with which they are endowed to arrive at the truth 
respecting the invisible world by employing the logical fac- 
ulty upon observed phenomena, the result is always a ration- 
alism, which, whether its conclusions be orthodox or hetero- 
dox, those of a Bishop Butler or those of a John Stuart Mill, is 
far removed from that spiritual religion which is founded on 
experience, not on deduction, and which says not, I conclude, 
I think, or I believe, but I know. 

2. But while the relation of cause and effect is the relation 
which binds phenomena together, there are other relations 
than those of cause and effect which the mind must perceive 
in order that it may classify phenomena, and truly apprehend 
their meaning and value. The phrenologist calls this faculty 
comparison, a name which seems to give to it too limited a 
scope ; and yet it is not easy to suggest for popular use a bet- 
ter title. By this power, called by whatever name, man per- 
ceives both differences and resemblances. He perceives the 
vital difference between a whale and other citizens of the 
ocean, and discovers that a whale is not a fish; he perceives 
the resemblance between the spark of electricity and the 
thunder-bolt, and out of this perception grows all electrical 
science; he perceives the resemblance between the fall of 



THE ACQUISITIVE POWERS. 69 

an apple and the movement of the earth, and out of this 
perception grows the whole science of modern astronomy ; 
he perceives the resemblance between man and the animal, 
and out of this perception grows comparative physiology. 
All science is based on this power; all eminent scientists 
possess it in an eminent degree, and employ it continuously, 
and often almost unconsciously. 

But this is by no means its only, perhaps not even its chief, 
scope. It traces resemblances between the outer and the 
inner world, the visible and the invisible. It is the poet's 
brush and the orator's, whereby they cast upon their canvas 
a thousand tropes and figures and metaphors. All language 
of the inward life employs unconsciously this subtle power of 
perceiving analogies. " He is frozen with horror; " " he is 
full of wrath;" "he is struck with an idea:" these and 
kindred phrases in our daily conversation are all based upon 
the possession of a power in man to see the subtle analogies 
between spiritual experience and external phenomena. These 
analogies make all life a parable; this power makes every 
man in some measure a poet and a prophet. It enters largely 
into all imagination, which is sometimes indeed the direct 
perception of invisible realities, but which is sometimes also 
the construction of new images by the power which perceives 
relations before unperceived, and brings together objects 
familar in forms and combinations before unknown. The 
ancient centaur may be fairly taken to illustrate both types 
of imagination. By his supersensuous faculty, his faith-power, 
the poet saw in the soul of man the strange amalgam between 
the bestial and the divine ; this was no visible disclosure, 
no logical deduction ; it was a spiritual perception. To em- 
body it to the senses of others, he combined the head and 
breast of a man with the body of a horse, an unreal combina- 
tion of real things, to illustrate a real but invisible combina- 
tion. The faculty which perceived the invisible amalgam 
was one, the faith faculty. The faculty which framed the 



70 A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE. 

visible combination was another, the faculty of comparison. 
The product of the two we call the product of the imagina- 
tion. 

This same faculty lies at the basis of all wit and humor. 
Two of the most difficult problems of mental science are : 
What is the secret of the beautiful ? What is the secret of 
the humorous ? I shall not enter here into these old problems, 
still less attempt to solve them. It is enough to say that by 
a general, if not universal, consent the foundation of both 
wit and humor is a sudden and unexpected discovery of 
either a disparity or a resemblance. Other elements enter 
into it. Not every such unexpected and sudden discovery 
produces a tendency to laugh. But it may safely be said that 
the faculty of comparison is always called into play in every 
ebullition of wit and humor, and that those whose faculty of 
comparison is either feeble or slow to act are never quick to 
take a joke, and rarely greatly enjoy it. 



ATTENTION, MEMORY, WILL. 71 



CHAPTER XI. 
ATTENTION, MEMORY, WILL. 

There are three other mental powers which are sometimes 
treated as separate faculties, attention, me?nory, and will. I 
do not so treat them here for the same reason that I have not 
treated hope and firmness as separate motive powers. Atten- 
tion and memory are rather mental habits than mental facul- 
ties, and will is the power which reigns over all the faculties ; 
it is the personality, the individuality, which, so to speak, ad- 
ministers the whole kingdom. 

1. Attention is a habit or power of concentration, which 
may characterize one faculty or another, or all combined. It 
is, however, usually a concentration for the time of all the soul's 
powers upon a single faculty, and is generally proportioned to 
earnestness of desire. The merchant finds no difficulty in con- 
centrating attention upon the business of his counting-room ; 
he does it without conscious effort ; but when he has returned 
home in the evening, it is with the greatest difficulty that he 
concentrates it upon a book, and sometimes reads a page be- 
fore he discovers that his mind has been upon the business of 
the day, not upon the Shakespeare in his hand. So a college 
boy easily puts his whole mind upon a ball game, but requires 
a vigorous act of the will to fasten it upon his Cicero or his 
Homer. The secret of attention is interest, and when the 
faculty is aroused by a strong motive all the power of the 
soul is concentrated on the problem before it instantly and in- 
stinctively and without an effort. The mother who is pray- 
ing for the recovery of her sick child does not find herself 
troubled by the wandering thoughts in prayer which have 
been the bane of her public worship so frequently in church. 



A STUD Y IN HUMAN NA TURE.~ 



2. As attention is the concentration of the faculties upon a 
subject, induced by strong interest in it, so memory is the 
retroactive action of each faculty. It is not a separate fac- 
ulty, as though the powers of the mind gathered truth and 
the memory received and stored it. It is generally propor- 
tioned both to the strength of the particular faculty and the 
interest in the particular subject. A man who has a well- 
developed faculty of numbers will remember dates ; a man 
who has a well-developed faculty of color will remember the 
picture which another has forgotten. One mind will remem- 
ber facts and principles, another words and localities. Mr. 
Maurice mentions as extraordinary the memory of his sister 
for the fragrance of a particular flower inhaled in her child- 
hood ; but his memory for principles is evident on every page 
of his published works. Joseph Cook will repeat with almost 
verbal accuracy a paragraph read months, perhaps years, be- 
fore. It is said of Henry Ward Beecher that, during the 
revival of 1856-7, at a prayer-meeting in Burton's Old The- 
ater, he declined to lead the congregation in the Lord's 
Prayer, because he dared not trust himself to repeat it with- 
out the book. For myself, I am never able to cite an author, 
or quote a text of Scripture, or a verse of a familiar poem, 
with any assurance of accuracy ; but I can go to my library, 
take down the book where I have seen or read the sentence 
I wish to quote, and turn to it, generally at once, though 
years have elapsed since I saw it. In another edition, differ- 
ently paged, I might search for it in vain. This simple illus- 
tration may suffice to make clear my meaning, if not to 
demonstrate its accuracy, that memory is simply the power 
of a faculty to retain what it has once acquired, or repeat 
what it has once done ; a power which depends usually, if not 
always, upon the degree of interest which attached to the 
first acquisition, or upon the force which attached to the 
first action. 

3. Into the question, the most hotly debated of all ques- 



ATTENTION, MEMORY, WILL. 73 

tions in mental science, of the freedom of the will, neither the 
limits of this little treatise, nor my object in writing it, allow 
me to enter. • But certainly any study of human nature would 
be fatally defective which failed to afford any philosophical 
statement concerning the will ; nor can such a statement be 
made and the question at issue between the two great schools, 
both in philosophy and theology, be ignored. I must content 
myself with very briefly stating the difference and my own 
conviction, without entering into any argument in support of 
the one position, or into any criticism of the other. 

One school of philosophy holds that the motive powers 
heretofore described are the ultimate facts of human nature ; 
that man is made up of these powers ; that he Is and neces- 
sarily must be governed by the strongest of these motives. 
The argument is very simple and not easy to answer. Man 
must be governed by the strongest motive ; for if not, then 
he would be governed by some other motive, which would, 
therefore, be stronger than the strongest, which is absurd. 
This is the philosophy, psychologically stated, of what is 
known as the Calvinistic school of theology, though repudi- 
ated now by many, perhaps by a majority of modern Calvin- 
ists. It is the theory also of a large school of modern 
scientists, who hold that mental phenomena, are as truly sub- 
ject to undeviating law as physical phenomena, and that 
every thought and emotion, no less than every force and 
phase of nature, is one link in an endless and never-to-be- 
broken or ended chain. In this view the will is only 
balance of the faculties and the preponderance of the strong- 
est. Philosophically it leaves man the creature of an inscru- 
table fate. Religiously this condition is escaped, because 
religion points to a God who is able, by a direct and super- 
natural intervention, to make strong the conscience and the 
love, which are by nature weak ; a God who will always thus 
interpose to save the lost from his own undoing, whenever, 

overpowered by a sense of his hopelessness, he appeals to 
4 



74 A ST LTD V IN HUMAN NA TURE. 

his Creator and Redeemer for that divine help without 
which he never can choose the good or turn away from the 
evii. 

The other school of philosophy holds that man himself is 
more than all the motive powers within him ; that he possesses 
what has been called a self-originating power of the will ; 
that his will, that is, he himself, his personality, the ego 
which makes him a free moral agent, has power not only over 
things external to him, but over his own appetites, desires, in- 
clinations, and is able to curb the one, and directly or indi- 
rectly to quicken and strengthen the other ; that he domi- 
nates himself; that he is not like a chip, the prey of every 
wind or wave ? nor like a steam-ship, controlled by its own 
sails and its own engines ; but like the same steam-ship when 
sails and engines are controlled by a master, who uses them 
to accomplish successfully his predetermined voyage. 

Which of these views of human nature will be taken by the 
student of life and character will be determined largely by the 
question whether he looks upon human nature from the outside 
or the inside. If he observes what it appears to do when 
studied by the " scientific method, " or determines what it must 
be presumed to do from considerations derived from the- 
ories of man's nature, God's nature, and the divine govern- 
ment, he will tend toward the Necessarian theory of life. If, 
on the other hand, he looks within, takes the testimony of 
his own consciousness and that of others, and believes 
the witness which men bear to their own interior con- 
viction of freedom, he will tend toward the other view. 
Samuel Johnson expressed this contrast by his saying, " All 
argument is against the freedom of the will ; we know we're 
free, and that's the end on 't." All mere external observa- 
tion and all a priori reasoning respecting human nature I 
regard as not worthy to be compared with the testimony of 
consciousness. It is the universal testimony of consciousness 
that there is a freedom of will, a power superior to the mo- 



ATTENTION, MEMORY, WILL. 75 

tive powers, a real self control, an ego which is not controlled 
by, but itself controls, every inward impulse and every intel- 
lectual power of the soul and spirit. This ego, this master 
of the moral mechanism, is the will ; and in its last analysis 
ail moral action and all moral character depends on the 
action and on the character of this ego, this master of the 
whole nature, this captain of the ship, this lord of the intel- 
lectual and mental domain. 



7 6 



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